Description: It can be so frustrating to put great effort into something, and then to have your work and achievements called into question. I can't begin to imagine how frustrated Samuel Pierpont Langley was in 1903. By that time, he had spent over forty years studying astrophysics and aerodynamics. His work on astronomically-derived time measurement in the late 1860's is the heart of the
Description: One of the challenges of being a reference archivist is focusing on the inquiries received, while suppressing the bits of information you come across that may be of personal interest (the corner of my desk is occupied by an ever increasing list of topics I aspire to research further on my own time). Recently, however, a colleague who is familiar with my interest in rare and
Description: While researching my last blog post on the "mad wolf" who escaped from the National Zoo, I came across an old black-and-white photograph in the Smithsonian Institution Archives that caught my eye. The image is grainy, but appears to show a man and a wolf, separated by a chain-link fence, holding each other's rapt attention while the man operates some sort of recorder. Unable
Description: As promised, we just uploaded a new batch of over twenty photographs from our Science Service collection to the Smithsonian Flickr Commons. This week is heavy on the anthropology, archeology, and psychology, with a dabble of astronomy and engineering thrown in. The photos include such gems as: Drs.
Description: So you want to be a conservator? In this continuation of our series on career advice, one of our conservators shares some advice for those looking to explore the professional field of cultural heritage conservation.
Description: A profile of the Archives' collections related to the Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899 which explored Alaska's flora, fauna, and geography.
Description: Link Love: a biweekly post with links to interesting videos and stories about archival issues, technology and culture, and Washington D.C. and American history.