Description: We've got big news! The Smithsonian Libraries and Smithsonian Institution Archives have merged to become Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.
Description: In addition to physical damage and deterioration of storage media, the technological complexity and dependency of electronic records make them uniquely vulnerable to loss, corruption, and alteration (both accidental and malicious). To achieve long-term preservation of fragile born-digital materials, digital archivists need a plan.
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: When I first applied for an internship at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, I admittedly did not know much about it. For my internship, I was asked to make a video that would explain to the general public what the Archives was, as well as what resources it could offer them. On my first day here I was told that the Archives held the records and history of the Smithsonian
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption=""Backscatter" x-ray scan, courtesy of Flickr user publik16, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] Following the Christmas Day capture of a passenger, dubbed “The Underwear Bomber,” who attempted to blow up an American airliner, controversy swirls around the use and efficacy of full body scanners and the fate of
Description: Right after Thanksgiving, on a promotional tour stop for his post-presidential memoir, Decision Points, George W. Bush visited Palo Alto, California to chat with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. According to a CBS News report, Mr. Bush mentioned that while he has more than 600,000 Facebook "friends," and now uses a Blackberry and iPad, during his presidency, he didn’t make much
Description: Formal portrait photographs of scientists tend to preserve the stiffness of the moment, rather than capture the sitter’s personality. Perhaps that is the reason that candid photographs of celebrities like Albert Einstein stick in public memory.A 1931 photograph of three Nobel laureate physicists illustrates why we tend to remember the informal photos of scientists more than