Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="421" caption="Smithsonian's pilot aluminum-can recycling program started early in February 1990. Forty-four containers like the one pictured were placed at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), National Air and Space Museum, and the Museum Support Center, 1989, by Jeff Tinsley,
Description: Visitors: Share photos of your trip to the Smithsonian museums in this new Flickr set! Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes posts an interview with Secretary Clough that includes a mention of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative and Institution’s overall prioritization of digitizing and archiving photographs. Time sink! The BBC launched a World Music Archive this morning! There
Description: Very early "big data" tracking mortality rates in 17th-century London. [via Smithsonian Magazine]The Mellon Foundation has funded an $887,000 project to develop community-driven archives! [via Info Docket]See what questions archivists across the country answered yesterday for #AskAnArchivist. [via SAA]What album would you be....if you could preserve yourself in a vinyl record.
Description: [caption id="attachment_10960" align="aligncenter" width="376" caption="Peter Finkel, volunteer at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. "][/caption] Here at the Archives, we have 25 fulltime staff members, and half as many volunteers and interns at any given moment.
Description: Many of us read, write and send emails every day, but when did it all start at the Smithsonian? In 1980 Smithsonian staff had typewriters and telephones on their desk, with one or two FAX machines per office. The Smithsonian operated a single general purpose computer, the Honeywell mainframe, for all Smithsonian data processing applications and which did not include an email
Description: [caption id="attachment_10342" align="alignleft" width="228" caption="Miss Willey Glover DeNis, (1879-1929), Smithsonian Institution Archives, SIA2008-0987."][/caption] At the Archives, we often run across images that have minimal information associated with them. Sometimes it’s a number or a name (usually incomplete) or a year. It is rare to find a beautifully complete
Description: Mary Ellen McCaffrey was a powerhouse with the Smithsonian’s Office of Printing and Photographic Services from 1972 until her retirement in 1995. As production control officer, she ensured that the photo orders submitted to the office were processed and completed. Sometimes, those jobs meant the office was required to make reproduction negatives. In other instances, staff
Description: In 1956, Helena M. Weiss received a letter asking for information about “how to capture them, also how to raise them… what to put them in, also what to feed them.” Interestingly, the letter-writer neglected to specify what he or she meant by “them,” leaving Weiss only to guess what exactly the inquiry was referring to. From 1948 to 1956, Weiss was Chief of the Office of