Description: Lord of the Rings fans! A newly-discovered map annotated by Tolkien. [via Open Culture]A last call for Archives Month to contribute your stories and memories of gardens and gardening to the Community Gardens digital archive. [via Smithsonian Gardens]Gorgeous fly-throughs of 17th Century London before The Great Fire from a talented group of students at De Montfort University. A
Description: …in which a member of the Archives staff turns her passion for sloths into a mission to research their history at the Smithsonian Institution.
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_6861,size=300,right] Some students look forward eagerly to the new school year; others dread the end of summer and the long year ahead. How did the Smithsonian’s founding donor, James Smithson (1765-1829), feel about school? Smithson attended Oxford University in England from 1782 to 1786, receiving a Masters of Arts degree in chemistry and mineralogy.
Description: The Smithsonian Institution Archives Reference Team handles an average of around 6,000 queries per year, and if you us what people have been researching at the Archives recently, you'll get some pretty interesting responses. Although not comprehensive, here's a snapshot of the diverse range of information encompassed by the history of the world's largest museum complex!
Description: [caption id="" align="alignright" width="179" caption="Portrait photograph of Harrison Gray Dyar (1866-1929), entomologist at the United States National Museum at the Smithsonian from 1897 until his death in 1929, c. 1920s, by Unidentified photographer, Photographic print, Negative Number: SIA2009-0002."][/caption] It turns out that a series of mysterious tunnels discovered in