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: I was intrigued to receive a tweet from a digital colleague over at the NY Times pertaining to a family story that could very well be solved at the Archives. I’m continuously surprised at the variety of papers we hold here, but by now, I shouldn’t be given how far-reaching and varied the scope of the Smithsonian has been through history. Back to the story. THE elephant that
Description: Happy National Trivia Day! January 4th is the perfect day to break out all those endless bits of knowledge stored in your noggin and share them with others. As for the history of National Trivia Day, it's thought that the creation of the game Trivial Pursuit in 1979 sparked the beginning of our fascination with trivia, and everythinge else is history, as they say. To feed our
Description: Throughout the next months, the Smithsonian Institution Archives will feature posts related to the Smithsonian and the Civil War in honor of the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. On July 21, 1861, the First Battle of Manassas raged just thirty miles southwest of Washington DC and the Smithsonian Institution Building that housed Secretary Joseph Henry and his family.
Description: Smithsonian Online (SOL) was an online platform through AOL that included Smithsonian images, chats, message boards and other features during the 1990s.
Description: A look at one of the many ways the Smithsonian’s mission to increase and diffuse knowledge brought scientific knowledge to aid the public good.
Description: Right after Thanksgiving, on a promotional tour stop for his post-presidential memoir, Decision Points, George W. Bush visited Palo Alto, California to chat with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. According to a CBS News report, Mr. Bush mentioned that while he has more than 600,000 Facebook "friends," and now uses a Blackberry and iPad, during his presidency, he didn’t make much
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: Have a little fun with images from our collections that have been designated as open access. Anyone can now download, transform, share, and reuse millions of images as part of Smithsonian Open Access.
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