Description: Link Love: a weekly post with links to interesting videos and stories about archival issues, technology and culture, and Washington D.C. and American history.
Description: The Freer Sackler Gallery’s efforts to make their large collection of squeezes (paper molds that capture the inscriptions of ancient monuments) into an easy-to-use Web resource received a nice write-up on The Atlantic’s Tech blog [originally posted on the Smithsonian Collections Blog]. David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, talks about “balancing access and
Description: On September 28, 1999, representatives of dozens of tribes from across the hemisphere gathered on the National Mall for the groundbreaking of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. On the overcast morning, several hundred people packed under three tents during a ceremony that featured blessings from the four cardinal directions. After the ceremony, some
Description: An overview of the history of Martha the passenger pigeon, the last of her species, who was donated to the National Museum of Natural History 100 years ago.
Description: Vicarious research is one of the great joys of the reference desk at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. From our front-row (well, only-row) seat outside the reading room, we catch tantalizing glimpses of our patrons’ manifold research topics.The reference team fields around 6,000 queries per year. Ask us what people have been researching recently, and you’ll get into some
Description: 100 years ago in August of 1914, the Panama Canal opened to commercial shipping. Smithsonian scientists knew the canal would create major environmental changes and have spent the last 100 years documenting them.