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Month: March 2014

Women in Research

Richard Naples
March 31, 2014
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Mary Agnes Chase, ca. 1960 from Flickr
Mary Agnes Chase, ca. 1960 from Flickr

As part of my duties in wrangling data for Smithsonian Research Online, I worked on a project to collect and ingest the historic legacy of published scholarship produced by Smithsonian researchers since the Institution’s inception in 1846. The main focus of my participation is cleaning and preparing the data, but I find it hard to resist not paying attention to its historic significance. I’ll admit occasionally getting lost thinking about what it was like to be on the front lines of natural history research, identifying and describing new species.

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The Fix: Building a Custom-Made Book Measurer

Don Stankavage
March 28, 2014
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This year, The Smithsonian Libraries (SIL) was given a monetary award by the Smithsonian Collections Care and Preservation Fund (CCPF) to re-house 558 folio volumes of special materials collections housed at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Library (CHMDL). These items were identified as requiring housing/re-housing by contract book conservators who conducted the CCPF funded condition survey of more than 4000 items at CHMDL in 2011-2012.

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Funding the Future of the Libraries

Liz O'Brien
March 27, 2014
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The Smithsonian Libraries is a vibrant force in promoting new ideas through knowledge sharing. We play a unique role in advancing scientific and cultural understanding, and in preserving America’s heritage. Our extensive collections and highly trained staff are a crucial and unmatched resource for research and education communities within the United States and around the world.

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Potawatomi Vocabulary Manuscript Added to Transcription Center

Doug Dunlop
March 25, 2014
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Title page from A vocabulary of the Po-da-wahd-mih Language by Joseph N. Bourassa, 1843.
Title page from A vocabulary of the Po-da-wahd-mih Language by Joseph N. Bourassa, 1843.

J.N. Bourassa’s A Vocabulary of the Po-da-wahd-mih Language is the latest addition from the Libraries to the Smithsonian Transcription Center. The Vocabulary was transcribed around 1890 from the original, which dates to 1843. The Potawatomi have traditionally inhabited the Upper Mississippi River region as well as Indiana and Kansas, and are making efforts to promote the use of their native language, a sub-group of the Algonquian language family.

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Women’s History Month: An American in Paris, Thérèse Bonney

Elizabeth Broman
March 21, 2014
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Women’s History Month: An American in Paris, Thérèse Bonney
Thérèse Bonney. Paris, France, 1925-30. Scissor shop sign, denoting the business of a seamstress or tailor.
Thérèse Bonney. Paris, France, 1925-30. Scissor shop sign, denoting the business of a seamstress or tailor.

Born in upstate New York, Thérèse Bonney(1897-1978), was a photojournalist whose work reflected a wide variety of interests and subjects. She studied at the University of California at Berkeley and Radcliffe College in the 1910s. Bonney immigrated to France in 1919 where she became one of the first ten women to graduate from the Sorbonne and founded the first American illustrated press service in Europe, the Bonney Service, in 1924. 

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Charming illustrations to cheer your spring

Erin Rushing
March 18, 2014
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March 17th is widely celebrated as St. Patrick’s Day but it also happens to be the birthday of notable childrens’ book illustrator Kate Greenaway. Born in London in 1846, she studied art at various schools, such as the Heatherley School of Fine Art, and began her career in watercolors and cards.  She was a contemporary or Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott and good friend to Victorian art critic John Ruskin.

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