Description: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival will be held from June 30 to July 4 and July 7 to 11, 2011 on the National Mall. Read more about the history of the Folklife Festival here. At the Smithsonian Folklife Festival this year, the Peace Corps is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an Executive Order authorizing the Peace Corps to
Description: This is the latest post in our "Hot Topix" series. In each quarterly edition we show you what the reference team has been up to, and bring you some of the more notable inuqires we have received.Vicarious research is one of the great joys of the reference desk at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. From our front-row (well, only-row) seat outside the reading room, we catch
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Taxes, by Mat Honan, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0 Generic."][/caption] Chances are that, if you live in the United States, you've recently filed your taxes. For most, filing tax returns is a dreaded task, even when you expect a refund. Doing taxes requires a lot of time and energy, and often results in some
Description: Looking at a recently acquired collection records created and maintained by former National Air and Space Museum director, Martin Harwit, that relate to the Enola Gay, its exhibition, and the controversy that ensued.
Description: For forty years, from around 1900 to 1941, Margaret W. Moodey (1862-1948) worked as a scientific aide in the Department of Geology at the United States National Museum. Her colleagues came to value her experience identifying, classifying, and cataloging geological specimens, which over the years, included gems and precious stones, fossil vertebrates and plants, and
Description: This piece is part one in a series of posts about Smithsonian Institution Archives’ (SIA) paper conservator and interns working on stabilizing a 1921 panoramic photo of air mail pilots and crews that is being moved to the National Air and Space Museum’s (NASM) Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. You can see Part II here. In addition to being the Paper Conservator for the Smithsonian
Description: When you’re all gathered together, sometimes there are just too many cooks in the kitchen, or younger siblings underfoot. Not everyone is into football or jigsaw puzzles, so why not gather together a couple of people from separate generations and branches of the family tree and do some photo identification and preservation? Set aside an hour between or after the meal to pull
Description: The Smithsonian Institution Archives has captured two years of Smithsonian websites using the web tool Archive-It. See how we predict future research.