Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="424" caption="U.S. National Museum, May 3, 1917, seen from the National Mall, by Unknown photographer, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 45, Box 79, Folder: 10, Neg. SIA2009-2203."][/caption] As part of my work as the historian for the history of the Smithsonian, I’ve been working for the past year on
Description: Get ready for this summer's big installation at the National Building Museum: Hive. [via WAPO]Want to play old school games like Frogger? The Internet Archive has a Mac game emulator for you! [via Wired]Produce art. [via Colossal]A series of tutorials from the American Alliance of Museums, Becoming a Data Startup (for museums). [via AAM]470,000 images from Europeana are now
Description: As editor E. E. Slosson began setting up the Science Service news office, his mail was flooded with inquiries from potential contributors. Writers and photographers described their accomplishments and submitted samples of their work. One such letter, from Albert Harlingue on April 13, 1921, must have piqued Slosson’s interest, for it coincided with the Washington visit of “a
Description: Link Love: a weekly post with links to interesting videos and stories about archival issues, technology and culture, and Washington D.C. and American history.
Description: New year edition!2017 public domain graduates! [via Public Domain Review]New Year's goals: champing. [via Atlas Obscura]The not-so-ancient art of diagramming sentences. [via NPR]Hallmark used to bring world renowned artists to the masses. [via Artsy]A parasitic scale insect known as cochineal is behind the "true red" color in ancient art. [via The Iris, Getty]Historian, Free
Description: These photos just make you want to write solely in pencil. [story on one of America's last pencil factory via NY Times]It's hard to believe the Flickr Commons, a space in Flickr for archival photo collections, is 10 years old. [via Library of Congress]Scientists, including a fellow from our National Museum of Natural History, Ligiane Moras, have identified two new species of
Description: This blog post was edited in October 2021 for clarification. While surveying and collecting specimens in the Aleutian Islands in 1871-1872 for the United States Coast Survey, later renamed the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, naturalist William Healey Dall befriended George Tsaroff (1858-1880), an Unangan (Aleut) teen from Unalaska Island who had been hired as local
Description: Link Love: a weekly post with links to interesting videos and stories about archival issues, technology and culture, and Washington D.C. and American history.
Description: While only two years old, World Migratory Bird Day is just one of the latest evolutions in conservation awareness. Related celebrations go back more than twenty-six years and draw on over a century of research.