Results for "Smithsonian Institution. Environmental Sciences Program"
Remembering Jessie Cohen
- Date: October 29, 2009
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: At SPI, we were sad to learn that Jessie Cohen died earlier this week. Jessie was one of the photographic mainstays at the Smithsonian; she started working at the Smithsonian National Zoo in 1979, photographing animals, their living quarters, and behind-the-scenes events for exhibition, education, and marketing purposes. In addition, Jessie also managed the Zoo’s exhibition
- Blog Post
Digital Humanists Dive Into Archives
- Date: August 3, 2011
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: Bloggers on The Bigger Picture often describe how, in the course of their work, they come across intriguing archival objects and artifacts that trigger new insights into history. “Hands on” encounters with compelling evidence from the past are thrilling and can be provocative. But so can different sorts of encounters, including those that are driven by data, rather than
- Blog Post
Coming into Focus
- Date: October 1, 2009
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="attachment_2376" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="blurredvision, by Flickr user Paul Denton Cocker."][/caption] According to the National Eye Institute, more than 3 million Americans are blind or have vision so poor that everyday tasks become extremely difficult. Interestingly, according to a recent article by Pam Belluck in The New York Times, a new
- Blog Post
Unsolved Mysteries
- Date: January 5, 2010
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="attachment_4088" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Lower Rose Window, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City, October 2009, by Bernardo Núñez, Digital photograph, © Bernardo Núñez / Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City (left); B-DNA, seen end-on, courtesy of Dr.
- Blog Post
Shape-Shifting and Sharing Data
- Date: June 27, 2011
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: When institutions archive data, they capture and organize it in digital formats that make the most sense to them, based upon their specific group of users, needs, and technical options that are available at a given point in time. But what happens if, for example, institutions decide that it makes sense to enhance their mission by their presenting data collections in less
- Blog Post
Wish You Were Here?
- Date: December 1, 2009
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="attachment_3071" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Spiral Galaxy Messier 81 (M81), 2003, Spitzer Space Telescope / IRAC, NASA / JPL-Caltech / S. Willner, Harvard-Smithsonian CfA"][/caption] You may in fact be, or just feel like, a big shot down here on earth. But, ever since airborne cameras started to photograph our little planet from above, and once they
- Blog Post
Google Halts an Archiving Project
- Date: June 8, 2011
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Newspapers, by Quinn Cowper, Creative Commons: BY-NC-ND 2.0."][/caption] On May 20th, a flurry of reports took note of Google’s decisions to halt its ambitious efforts to digitize the contents of newspaper archives and make them online and at no cost.
- Blog Post
Them Bones
- Date: April 27, 2010
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: Look at enough photographs and it’s inevitable that, at some point, you’ll find yourself pondering mortality and photography’s relationship to death. Because the medium so effectively captures fragments of lives, events, and data that have come and gone, you’re always looking at and trying to make sense of something that’s over, finished, part of the past. Writers—particularly
- Blog Post
Most Likely to be Succeeded
- Date: May 19, 2010
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Posing with a yearbook picture of myself, by Billy Mabray, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] I’m a fan of yearbooks. I was an editor of mine in college, a somewhat unusual, multi-volume, and boxed object that included two books, a booklet, a brochure, and (it being the late sixties) a balloon. Back then, we
- Blog Post
Can We Just Forget It?
- Date: July 15, 2010
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Eraser, by Sarah McKenzie, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] An interesting story surfaced about a week ago, concerning an over-eager defense lawyer anxiously seeking to expunge not only governmental, but media archives, too, of potentially damaging information or previously published articles about a number
- Blog Post
Made You Look!!!
- Date: July 8, 2010
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="attachment_7261" align="alignleft" width="430" caption="Advertisement on Fifth Avenue in New York City, 2010, Photo courtesy of Marvin Heiferman."][/caption] You’ve probably noticed, in recent years, that in order to attract shoppers’ attention retail establishments have been filling both exterior and interior display spaces with big, colorful, and evocative
Cut and Paste, Old Style
- Date: September 13, 2011
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: Some years back, and for what seemed like quite a while, people were talking about scrapbooking. As more aspects of everyday life were going digital, it felt like more and more people were paying homage to the paper-based mementoes of their experiences that appeared to be heading for oblivion. Quickly, and to support all the saving, trimming, and gluing that people were