Description: The Smithsonian Institution Archives recently acquired the papers of Ursula Marvin, a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory geologist who has studied meteorites and lunar samples.
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
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="A Penmanship sign was located in Boerum Hill and was painted in 1997. It was a faux billboard created by Jerry Johnson of Orange Outdoor Advertising, Photo by Bosc d'Anjou, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0 Generic."][/caption] A week or so ago, I was looking through documents scanned by the Smithsonian Institution
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_10581,size=200,left]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
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_8698,size=300,left]Today marks the forty-fourth anniversary of the opening of the Anacostia Community Museum (ACM), then called the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum. The ACM opened in 1967 at the old Carver Theater in the Anacostia section of Washington, DC. The “experimental community museum” was first suggested by the Smithsonian’s eighth Secretary S.