Description: What better time to capture family memories and stories than when you and your relatives gather to celebrate Thanksgiving? For the past several years, several organizations have encouraged families to listen to one another and record family history over the Thanksgiving weekend. StoryCorps, for example, has launched The National Day of Listening. So put down that pumpkin pie
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: Welcome to Throwback Thursday! This holiday season, I hope to inspire you to take a trip down memory lane to the land of erstwhile and bygone days of the family photo album. What better time to pull these one of a kind treasures off the shelves than during the family festivities! Recently over the Thanksgiving holiday, I rediscovered my own family’s quasi-prehistoric,
Description: When you’re all gathered together, sometimes there are just too many cooks in the kitchen, or younger siblings underfoot. Not everyone is into football or jigsaw puzzles, so why not gather together a couple of people from separate generations and branches of the family tree and do some photo identification and preservation? Set aside an hour between or after the meal to pull
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