Description: Harvard's pigment collection. [via Collossal]Also with gorgeous colors, a 700+ page Dutch book from 1692 documenting "every color in the spectrum." [via Open Culture] A new online exhibit examining what it's like to work in the U.S. on a H-1B visa from the Smithsonian's Asian Pacific American Center. [via Smithsonian Magazine] Later this year, scientists (including our own
Description: Institutions devise all sorts of procedures to determine what kinds of documents to collect, and how to save and archive them. The Smithsonian Institution Archives, for example, advises and works with various museums, research institutes, and offices across the Smithsonian, on an ongoing basis, to determine and manage what will get archived for posterity. But in some
Description: Link Love: a weekly post with links to interesting videos and stories about archival issues, technology and culture, and Washington D.C. and American history.
Description: The men and women of the Smithsonian are the Institution’s most important asset, a fact which was as true in the 1910s as it is today. The staff of the Smithsonian work together to fulfill their mission: ‘the increase and diffusion of knowledge,’ working for the public good and engaging the world. During World War I, this mission expanded beyond academic knowledge to support
Description: Each week, the Archives features a woman who has been a groundbreaker at the Smithsonian, past or present, in a series titled Wonderful Women Wednesday.
Description: Have a little fun with images from our collections that have been designated as open access. Anyone can now download, transform, share, and reuse millions of images as part of Smithsonian Open Access.
Description: A twentieth century Renaissance man, Louis R. Purnell lived a remarkable life. His career began in the skies above Italy and Germany, where he flew 88 combat missions as an original member of the Tuskegee Airmen. After the war, while working at the National Museum of Natural History, he traveled the world’s oceans collecting marine specimens, taught himself geology and