Description: [caption id="attachment_8465" align="alignright" width="199" caption="Beth Antoine, Postgraduate Fellow in Conservation, conducts research on the letter or copy press books of Secretary Spencer F. Baird, Courtesy of Nora Lockshin."][/caption] One year ago on October 8th, after several years of planning, waiting, and building, the Smithsonian Center for Archives Conservation
Description: Each week, the Archives features a woman who has been a groundbreaker at the Smithsonian, past or present, in a series titled Wonderful Women Wednesday.
Description: Although initially skeptical about the effectiveness of the hypsometer, Secretary Joseph Henry soon recognized the value of the instrument, which he discovered from his colleagues in the scientific field.
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: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_14492,size=500,center]Dr. Squires was a pioneer in the application of computer technology in science museums and the founding father of data processing at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). He died on his 90th birthday, December 19, 2017 in Tasmania, Australia, after a short illness. Squires received an B.A. from Cornell
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: [caption id="" align="alignright" width="234" caption="Mary Henry, October 20, 1882, by Unidentified photographer, Card Photograph, Smithsonian Institution Archives, RU 95, Box 12, Folder 5, Negative Number: 82-3258. "][/caption] As we enter into the holiday season, the Smithsonian Institution Archive’s blog will be exploring memories: what they mean, how to capture them, and
Description: As a teenager, Robert Ridgway was tapped by the Smithsonian’s Assistant Secretary to be an expedition zoologist. In 1881, when the US National Museum opened its doors, he was the curator of Birds. Download and reuse some of bird illustrations today through Smithsonian Open Access.
Description: Grab your popcorn! To mark the Smithsonian’s 175th anniversary this year, the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives will host monthly virtual programs featuring films from the collections of the Smithsonian Institution Archives. Register today.
Description: Here at the Smithsonian we love to observe. So of course on August 23, 2011, at 1:51 PM, when a 5.8 magnitude earthquake shook the Washington, DC region and many of us with it, we immediately started to observe what happened and how we could document it. As the Institution's historians, inevitably we needed to know, had this happened before and what were the effects? After