Description: In addition to physical damage and deterioration of storage media, the technological complexity and dependency of electronic records make them uniquely vulnerable to loss, corruption, and alteration (both accidental and malicious). To achieve long-term preservation of fragile born-digital materials, digital archivists need a plan.
Description: [caption id="attachment_9678" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="View of the Archives Fair setup, October 22, 2010."][/caption] We are going to be live blogging from the Smithsonian Archives Fair this morning and profiling all of the activities that will be going on today. Stay tuned throughout the day to see what's going on. [caption id="attachment_9680"
Description: Photos in the Science Service collection documenting Herbert Hoover's historic acceptance of the Presidential nomination with live radio coverage.
Description: The historical legacy of amatuer photographer Julian Papin Scott (1877-1961) is far greater than was acknowledged at the time, because of both who he photographed and how he set up the images.
Description: In 1925, seven George Washington University students volunteered to stay awake for sixty hours, and drove, danced, sang, and swam in an effort to remain alert.
Description: In their efforts to document the history of computing at the Smithsonian, volunteers are interviewing former staff to preserve their stories and experiences. Ching-hsien Wang was a force that helped libraries and archives make their collections accessible online and here are some early excerpts from our interview with her.
Description: Consider the courage it took for some of the earliest women in science at the Smithsonian to donate their personal papers to the Institution.
Description: Despite another year of telework and limited physical access to our collections, the Smithsonian Institution Archives has continued to serve our researchers and share more of our collections with the public.
Description: Eliza Scidmore was a lifelong photographer, writer, and world traveler. In addition to facilitating a gift of cherry blossom trees from Japan to the U.S. capital, Scidmore donated her time, photographs, and some artifacts to the Smithsonian’s collections. She also accessed the world through colonial channels that she reinforced with her writings.
Description: Cancer, James T. Patterson observed in The Dread Disease, serves as a powerful metaphor in American culture, where the malady mirrors the “manifestation of social, economic, and ideological divisions” in modern life. In the decades since publication of Patterson’s book, medical research has made great strides in methods of detection and treatment. But the challenge for science