Description: Lord of the Rings fans! A newly-discovered map annotated by Tolkien. [via Open Culture]A last call for Archives Month to contribute your stories and memories of gardens and gardening to the Community Gardens digital archive. [via Smithsonian Gardens]Gorgeous fly-throughs of 17th Century London before The Great Fire from a talented group of students at De Montfort University. A
Description: As we digitize the Archives’ collections to make them available online, I am constantly being exposed to handwriting from the past two centuries. As a result, I have a deeper appreciatiation of how many different things influence the way a person’s writing appears on the page, things beyond the quality of their penmanship. Writing on the deck of a ship, on horseback or on
Description: Yesterday, we celebrated MayDay2019 by reviewing the contents of Nora’s PRICE team go-bag, which you can explore in this Facebook Live, courtesy of the Foundation for the Advancement of Conservation!This MayDay post comes to you at a time when cultural heritage disasters on a mass scale are fresh in people’s minds. Paying attention to high visibility events offers opportunity
Description: A new exhibit and publication from the National Air and Space Museum looks at the architectural beauty of airport towers with photos by Carolyn Russo. [via Weather.com]“The government must take the lead in reinvesting in the arts and humanities,” according to Smithsonian Secretary David Skorton. [via Washington Post]The Smithsonian made a 3D scan of Apollo 11 from the National
Description: As an intern with the Smithsonian Institution Archives, I developed strategies that would make our born-digital collections more accessible to the researcher and enhance discoverability.
Description: The Archives was recently gifted an 1860 letter from Spencer F. Baird, second Secretary of the Smithsonian, to George N. Lawrence, fellow naturalist. The donor requested that, along with a digital version, a transcription be provided, which I undertook alongside a simple treatment. The letter was in overall excellent condition: the thin paper exhibited only a pair of small
Description: Even with help from the dedicated Flickr Commons community, there are still many more images to identify in the Ruel Pardee Tolman Flickr set.