Tag Archives: National Museum of Natural History

Honolulu Calling: A Tapa Barkcloth Binding for a 1930 Phone Book from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel

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Tapa Cloth front cover for the Hawaiian Telephone Directory

Front cover of the Tapa cloth binder for the Winter 1930 Telephone Directory for the Territory of Hawaii

The Smithsonian Institution Libraries recently acquired a telephone book. Big deal, you say? Ah, but this is a telephone directory for the territory of Hawaii, issued for the winter of 1930. For that reason alone, it’s fun to browse through, to see the old advertisements and daydream about living in the gorgeous Hawaiian Islands, back in the days when the entire list of businesses and households in the territory which owned telephones could be recorded in one slim volume.

But this isn’t just any old phone book. This particular copy belonged to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu, which opened in February 1927 on the spectacular Waikiki beachfront. Known as “the Pink Palace of the Pacific,” the Royal Hawaiian Hotel was one of the earliest luxury resorts established in this tropical paradise. The stylish décor featured at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, inspired partly by the native crafts of the South Sea Islanders, exerted a lasting influence upon tourists from the mainland, who came to associate the good life in Hawaii with vivid patterns reminiscent of exotic plants, birds, marine life, sunshine, and ocean waves. Continue reading →

The Next Best Thing to Being There …

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In case you missed the event, here is a video of remarks made at the grand re-opening of the National Museum of Natural History's new main library.

Featured are Nancy E. Gwinn, Director, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Wayne Clough, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution, and Cristián Samper, Director, National Museum of Natural History.

The video was shot by Smithsonian Libraries staff members Joel Richard (thanks, Joel!), with titles and transitions added by Gil Taylor.

—Gil Taylor

NMNH Library Grand (Re)Opening

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Four years after the initial design process began, the National Museum of Natural History Library showed off its new home to over 170 guests. Folks poured in to see the new space and attend the ribbon cutting ceremony. Dr. Wayne Clough, Dr. Eva Pell, Dr. Scott Miller, Dr. Cristian Samper, Dr. Nancy Gwinn and Ann Juneau aimed their scissors at the special red ribbon and simultaneously snipped. Drs. Clough, Samper, and Gwinn presented meaningful thoughts about the historically intrinsic value of the library at the Smithsonian. The three blended the relevance of the past with that of the present and future. Nancy also acknowledged the hard work by multiple library staff and staff of the Institution that brought the project to full fruition. The totality of the delightful food, libations, masterful set up and service by the caterers made the affair jubilant especially to those closely associated with the design, construction and move of the library to the space.

Cutting the ribbon, L-R: Under Secretary for Collections and Interdisciplinary SupportScott Miller, Undersecretary for Science Eva Pell, Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough, National History Museum Director Cristian samper, National Museum of Natural History Librarian Anee Juneau, Smithsonian Libraries Director Nancy E. Gwinn.

To characterize some of features the new library has to offer, a wide-screen digital signage board displayed relevant Twitter feeds, a live National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) webcam shot, NMNH-oriented announcements, and 2 videos promoting Libraries' services. The new LCD screens and whiteboards in the Training and Conference rooms displayed images from the Libraries' Digital Library, a hosted overview of the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and a Bluray DVD from the NMNH Sant Ocean Hall project. One writeboard was set up for guests to experiment with and sign a digital guest book. To bring to the fore the value of the all important content from which the Libraries' Digital Library images were formed, Leslie Overstreet graced the set up with several Cullman Library rare books opened to images that guests could admire and compare with their sister digital equivalents on the screens in front of them.

—Ann Juneau

Stack of books cake

Guests enjoy the new spacious library

Happy Birthday Theodore Roosevelt!

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Theodore Roosevelt Scrapbook-Inscription Theodore Roosevelt Scrapbook-Dblpg4 Theodore Roosevelt—African game trails Scrapbook. More photos of the album can be viewed on the Libraries' Flickr.

In honor of Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday 152 years ago today, we’re happy to announce that a scrapbook documenting his public career, made on the pages of his book African game trails (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910) has just been sent for conservation treatment.

The book itself is Roosevelt’s own description of the Smithsonian/Roosevelt African Expedition of 1909-1910, which resulted in thousands of specimens for the National Museum of Natural History. This copy was presented by Roosevelt in 1910 to his secretary at the Outlook Company, Stuart Hill, who then turned it into a scrapbook containing more than 2,000 pasted-in items relating to Roosevelt’s public career.

This unique copy of the book came to us in the Russell E. Train Africana Collection, and as you can see, it’s stuffed to the gills with newspaper clippings, photographs, drawings, letters, invitations, and miscellaneous ephemera from the early 1900s, attached to the pages of the text.

Because the glues are failing and the paper of the inserted materials is acidic and brittle, any handling causes damage, and the volume has been off-limits to readers since we acquired it. But now we have special funding from the Smithsonian’s Collection Care and Preservation Fund to give it a full conservation treatment. This involves photographing the volume in its current state to document every single page and all of the inserts; labeling each scrap as the book is taken apart; removing glues, de-acidifying the paper of the inserts, and cleaning the text pages; mounting all of the inserts on acid-free leaves; and then putting the printed text and the insert leaves back together in 3 more-reasonably sized volumes. It is estimated that this pains-taking process will take the better part of a year.

When it has been preserved in this way researchers will be able to read all of the inserted materials and form a complete picture of the book and its contents. The book and the Train Africana Collection are available for consultation in the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History, one of the Libraries' rare-book rooms, located in the National Museum of Natural History.

—Leslie K. Overstreet, Curator of Natural-History Rare Books

Good Luck, Amy!

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A very special Libraries staffer, Amy Levin, retired in September. Amy had been with the Smithsonian Libraries since 1975.

Amy earned her B.S. in natural sciences (biology and chemistry) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and her M.L.S. from the University of Pittsburgh. She also received a certificate in medical librarianship from the Veteran’s Administration Hospital. Before coming to the Libraries, Amy was a Geology & Geophysics Librarian at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and worked as a reference librarian in the U.S. Geological Survey Library.

One of Amy’s many gifts was her ability to adapt and help out wherever needed in the Libraries. Amy initially worked in the National Museum of Natural History Library, which also held the Museum Studies & Reference Library collections at that time (called Central Reference & Loan, or CRLS). When the Libraries decided to split the collections in 1984, Amy stayed with CRLS, eventually transferring to the National Air & Space Museum Library for the remainder of the 1980s. She ultimately came back to CRLS, and then served as head librarian of the newly-formed MRSL for several years.

Amy has several interesting stories about her times with the Libraries. When the Museum Reference Center moved to the Museum of Natural History, an anole lizard crawled out of a moving box shipped from New Orleans. The animal was taken to the Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington, Va. for the remainder of its life. Also, Amy slightly escaped injury when the ceiling in the National Air & Space Library fell on her desk (some contractors were working above!) Other career highlights include corresponding with the foreign embassies in DC, a visit to the National Museum of Natural History of Kenya (Nairobi), and a tour of the National and University Library of Iceland.

Amy will stay busy in her retirement through working on the executive board of the Arlington County Civic Federation, reading books that she’s been putting off for years, organizing her house, and of course, volunteering at the Libraries! She will also have more time to spend with her daughter Rena, a Fulbright Scholar working in Oslo, Norway, and her son Joe, who teaches English at Nanjing University in China.

—Liz O'Brien