Description: This piece is part two in a series of posts about Smithsonian Institution Archives’ (SIA) paper conservator and interns working on stabilizing a 1921 panoramic photo of air mail pilots and crews that is being moved to the National Air and Space Museum’s (NASM) Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Also see part 1 and a related post on NASM's blog. [caption id="attachment_7587"
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.
Description: In the early years of the National Museum of Natural History’s Insect Zoo, staff members, volunteers and their family ventured out to local field, streams and even monuments to collect specimens.
Description: As one of the first women to work in scientific illustration at the Smithsonian, Violet Dandridge made her mark at the United States National Museum.
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_13754,size=400,center]When people think of a Smithsonian exhibit, they probably don’t think of one filled with documents from an archives! A piece of paper doesn’t grab your attention from across the room, as the Fénykövi elephant or Chuck Berry’s car do. But on closer inspection, handwritten scraps have fascinating stories to tell. They can be
Description: This is the final part in a three-part series of blog posts about a research project on treating fire-affected optical discs. In this final post, we’ll summarize our research and outline possible next steps.
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: With the running of the Boston Marathon this past week, be sure to check out Northeastern University's, "Our Marathon," a crowd-sourced, digital archive of pictures, videos, stories, and social media related to the Boston Marathon bombing. [via Ricc Ferrante, SIA]In the early days of my career as an archivist, I had the privilege of cataloging the papers of Grace Nicholson, a
Description: In honor of Women's History Month, here is a brief biography of sorts about Viola S. Schantz, a prominent mammalogist who worked for the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service from 1918-1961.