Description: Why would an English chemist donate his fortune to the United States, a newly formed country he had never visited? We will likely never know exactly why in 1826 James Smithson chose to bequeath more than half a million dollars to create the Smithsonian Institution.
Description: I was recently given the opportunity to work as a Collections Care Intern at the Smithsonian Institution Archives for the months of November and December 2015, under the supervision and partnership of the Archives’ Collections Care Team. During my short time here, I worked on two parallel projects focused on surveying, preserving, and treating oversized archival collections: