The post was written by Vanessa Haight Smith, book conservator and head of Preservation Services.
On August 19th, I participated in the fifth annual “Hidden Treasures” event at the SI affiliate, the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh. Visitors to the popular event are encouraged to bring their prized possessions to the History Center and meet with professional appraisers as the local CBS affiliate, KDKA-TV, cameras roam the museum.
Wikipedia is coming for a visit! On Friday, October 12, the Libraries, in cooperation with other Smithsonian units, will welcome local Wikipedia editors for a day full of creating and editing articles using Smithsonian Libraries resources. With American Archives Month, National Book Month, and Open Access Week, October lends itself to an event for Wikipedia Loves Libraries. In its second year, Wikipedia Loves Libraries is a campaign to bring Wikipedia and libraries together with on-site events, and help build lasting relationships between libraries and their local Wikipedian community. If you edit Wikipedia or want to learn how, we would love for you to come! Check out the Wikipedia Meetup page for more info.
This post was written by Jacqueline Chapman, a summer intern working on the Digital Asset Management System.
Being able to say that I work by “The Giant Snake” on the same floor as the Hope Diamond is pretty exciting – but what’s in the office is just as engaging as what surrounds it!
For my internship, I was tasked with developing a workflow for the ingest of image files into the Smithsonian’s relatively new Digital Asset Management System (DAMS). My guide is meant to serve as a model for future SIL old media and legacy data ingest projects. It describes the steps needed to bring previously scanned and photographed items together for retrieval, storage, and preservation. Long-term, the plan is for each Smithsonian digital image to be ‘backed up’ within the DAMS rather than on separate computers, hard drives, CDs, etc. Additionally, the DAMS will serve as a central repository for digital images, searchable across the institution – facilitating inter-departmental image discovery and use in research, exhibitions, projects, and enterprise.
The Smithsonian Libraries seeks a computer science or MLS student for the Taxonomic Literature 2 Linked Data Mining internship. This is a paid internship, carrying a stipend of $500 per week (full time) or a total of $1500 (part time) to take place in January/Febuary of 2013. It may be performed in person, in the National Museum of Natural History, in Washington, D.C. or remotely. Applications will be accepted until October 15th, 2012. Further project details are below or at http://library.si.edu/internships/taxonomic-literature-2-linked-data-mining-paid-internship.
We are thrilled to participate in this year’s Smithsonian Teachers’ Night! The event, which will mark its 20th Anniversary, will be held this Friday, September 28th, from 7:00 pm to 9:30 pm in the Kogod Courtyard of the Reynolds Center (Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery).
On the evening of September 13th, the Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute hosted with the Smithsonian Institution Libraries their first Adopt-a-Book Event. In appreciation of their participation, displayed here is a map from the Dibner Library’s collections:
A treatment we commonly perform in the Conservation Lab is re-backing. A weak point in many case bound books is the gutter. When it fails the spine typically deteriorates and falls off the back of the book. A re-backing replaces the original spine and enables the book to be used again without sustaining further damage.