Description: This is the latest post in our series on career advice for the aspiring archives professionals. Each edition features information and career advice from a different member of the Archives team, regarding what they do, how they got here, and how you can too. Check out our previous posts, and don’t be afraid to let us know who you would like to hear from next!The Archives has
Description: Planning a museum or gallery exhibition takes a lot of work as seen through exhibition records that contain images, layouts, object labels, memos, and other important materials.
Description: Wired Science has great coverage of our recent “Field Book Lantern Slides” Flickr Commons set, complete with more information from the Smithsonian’s Thomas Jorstad, who works in the paleontology department at the National Museum of Natural History. Yeek! A Dust Archive (for real!) [via Marguerite Roby, SIA].
Description: This blog piece is about summer weather in Washington, DC, the Alice Pike Barney collections here at SIA, and the Barney’s “summer cottage” in Bar Harbor, ME, “Ban-y-Bryn.”
Description: On the evening of October 1, 1847, while using a small telescope on the roof of the family home, Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) spotted a comet where one had not been before. Word of this achievement spread quickly through the scientific community. The American Journal of Science declared her “the first American entitled to the honor of the original discovery of a comet.” Some
Description: 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 tantalizing glimpses of our patrons’ manifold research topics.The reference team fields around 6,000 queries per year. Ask us what people have been researching recently, and you’ll get into some
Description: As a remarkable auction of artifacts of a bygone aristocratic world takes place, we look at a surprising connection between Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe and the Smithsonian’s founding benefactor, James Smithson