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 thousands of questions per year.
Description: Oral history interviews sometimes reveal the central role that a mentor can play in the life of a young person, changing the road taken in that person’s life.
Description: The Smithsonian Institution Archives has a lot of diaries. And they offer researchers a glimpse into the daily lives of scientists doing their work in the field and sometimes the joy and tragedy of family life.
Description: Since our move to Smithsonian Institution Support Center, in the fall of 2015, the Archives have been able to work on longer-term projects using the photographic negatives stored in our cold storage vault. One of these projects is systematically scanning the collection of glass plate negatives from the United States National Museum, Division of Graphic Arts Photograph