Description: So you know those thousand words a picture is worth? It’s true! Though my idea of what those thousand words should be might differ from yours and that’s why we’re going to talk about descriptive metadata, controlled vocabularies, and levels of access. Boy howdy, sounds like a wild ride, eh? When I was younger and infinitely more creative with how I spent my time I used to
Description: Intern Marie Desrochers details her experience with co-intern Sarah Casto, stabilizing and rehousing the Macbeth Gallery Scrapbook collection at Archives of American Art.
Description: If you are a regular reader, or someone who works for a museum, library, or archive, you intimately understand the difficulty in managing big collections. If you’re not in this world, you do understand how hard it is to manage family photographs, a collection of email love letters, or the folder tucked in the bottom of your closet with old college papers. When you multiply
Description: Thirty-six years ago today, M*A*S*H: Binding Up the Wounds opened at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and the response was overwhelming.
Description: Behind the archivists, technicians, and specialists of the museum field are an abundance of organizations that network ideas, connect professionals, and present new strategies to broaden the impact of museums (American Alliance of Museums, Society of American Archivists, etc.). Many associations focus on specific aspects of this dynamic field and help to push museum practice
Description: This post is the third in a series this month that honor the anniversary of the famous Scopes Trial held in Tennessee from July 10–21, 1925. We're highlighting a set of rare and newly digitized photographs from the Smithsonian Institution Archives collections, of witnesses at the trial, which have been added to the Smithsonian Flickr Commons. On Wednesday afternoon, July 15,
Description: Long ago and far away, before gray hairs and creaky knees, before history became my passion, I was an undergraduate physics major. Physics seemed fascinating and beautiful, if difficult. Later, after career paths led into history and science policy, I learned that physics, however elegant, did not reside in a cultural vacuum. Its people and discoveries coexisted with
Description: This coming weekend muggles from around the world will be participating in the International Quidditch Association’s World Cup; but did you know that this growing sport may have a Smithsonian connection?
Description: As a teenager, Robert Ridgway was tapped by the Smithsonian’s Assistant Secretary to be an expedition zoologist. In 1881, when the US National Museum opened its doors, he was the curator of Birds. Download and reuse some of bird illustrations today through Smithsonian Open Access.