Description: When I was preparing to begin my internship at the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA), I wasn’t quite sure what I would be doing. I knew that I would be working in the Institutional History Division (IHD), and I knew that I would be helping to prepare oral history interviews to be sent off for transcription. During my senior year as an undergraduate student, I had dealt
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="368" caption="Cybill Shepherd at the "Castle" during the filming of "Chances Are," where she plays an SI curator, 1988, by Jeff Tinsley, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 371, Box 5, Negative Number: 88-10752-31. "][/caption] The frequency with which the words “curator” and “curating” pop up continues to
Description: Watch a recently-digitized video clip featuring Japanese Ceramics Today, an exhibition at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in 1983.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="293" caption="Aerial view of the Rhode River and the site of the Chesapeake Bay Center for Environmental Studies (CBCES), now known as the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), in Edgewater, Maryland, Date unknown, by Unidentified photographer, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 549 Box 2
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:
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Carol Burnett, with the charwoman costume that she donated to National Museum of American History. At the presentation ceremony, Burnett honored a reporter's request and bellowed out her famous Tarzan yell, 1988, by Jeff Tinsley, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 371 Box 5 Folder July 1988,
Description: June the 9th is AskArchivists Day: a day organized by the International Council on Archives to encourage you to ask professional archivists all over the world all of those burning questions about about their profession and about the collections in archives you've always wanted answered.[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="The Smithsonian Institution
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_12123,size=250,left]It is a simple answer really: We counted. From 1978 to 1983, the Smithsonian undertook a comprehensive inventory of its collections. It was the first time the Smithsonian had ever tried to count each object in its collections and it was a massive task. Over five years, staff from every museum and research center spent thousands of