Description: Welcome to the newly refreshed Smithsonian Institution Archives website! As our regular visitors may have noticed, we launched a new theme for our site on September 27, 2017. Our previous Drupal theme was first launched in 2011 when we moved our site over to Drupal. Since that time, we have upgraded the backend, made improvements to our searching, and increased the
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Newspapers, by Quinn Cowper, Creative Commons: BY-NC-ND 2.0."][/caption] On May 20th, a flurry of reports took note of Google’s decisions to halt its ambitious efforts to digitize the contents of newspaper archives and make them online and at no cost.
Description: 2015 is the 250th anniversary of James Smithson’s birth. Although we don’t know the day of his birth, this year we are celebrating his birthday.
Description: Did you know that May is National Photography Month? Declared by Congress as a month-long event in 1987, National Photography Month celebrates all aspects of photography. We invite you to see what our photographers were up to a century before this declaration in this behind- the-scenes slideshow of the photographic laboratory spaces, set-ups, and equipment of the United States
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="220" caption="Cover of Reader's Digest magazine featuring article on sexting, by Matt M, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] Over the past few weeks, the web’s been abuzz with articles, blog posts, and comments about sexting, the practice of sending explicit photos (and sometimes texts and videos as well) over the Internet.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="A Penmanship sign was located in Boerum Hill and was painted in 1997. It was a faux billboard created by Jerry Johnson of Orange Outdoor Advertising, Photo by Bosc d'Anjou, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0 Generic."][/caption] A week or so ago, I was looking through documents scanned by the Smithsonian Institution
Description: Starting tomorrow through next week, we will be digging into the life of entomologist Harrison Gray Dyar (1866-1929). Dyar was honorary custodian of the Smithsonian's United States National Museum's collection of Lepidoptera (butterflies, moths, etc.) for more than thirty years. As a scientist, Dyar was noted for his work concerning mosquito-borne diseases. He also developed a