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Month: September 2014

The New and Improved Hirshhorn Audio

A few months back, we set out to ingest the Hirshhorn Museum Library Audio Archive from our old site into our new, Drupal-run site.  The collection include audio clips of interviews with artists as well as lectures and other events held at the museum from 1969-2004. With the use of views and panels, we were able to set up the Hirshhorn audio page in a similar layout to the old site.  With the use of feeds import, we were able to ingest all of the information about each and every lecture. We converted the links of the media files to audio players so that you never have to leave the page you are on in order to hear the supporting audio. It was a great opportunity to flex my Drupal muscles.

Remembering Martha: A recap of our Twitterchat

On September 2nd, 2014, the day after the 100th anniversary of the death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon, the Smithsonian Libraries , National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) hosted a twitterchat in honor of the beloved bird. The chat featured Helen James, Curator in Charge of the Division of Birds at NMNH and Martin Kalfatovic, program director of BHL, who contributed for their respective organizations.

Vauban’s Treatise on Seiges added to Transcription Center

Hand-colored illustration of fortified entrance from Traitté des sieges
Hand-colored illustration of fortified entrance from Traitté des sieges

Sébastien Vauban (1633-1707) was the premier military engineer of his age and revolutionized siege warfare. Vauban was a Marshal of France as well as a Marquis. He is best known for his engineering and theoretical approach to fortifications, both on the design and attack fronts. One of his fascinating manuscripts on the fortification of cities was recently uploaded to the Smithsonian Transcription Center where you can help uncover its secrets.

 

Ephemeral Thoughts during the Waning Days of Summer

Cherry blossoms along the Tital Basin. Photo by Julia Blakely.
Cherry blossoms along the Tital Basin. Photo by Julia Blakely.

This post was written by rare books cataloger Julia Blakely. It originally appeared on the Smithsonian Collections Blog.

The spectacular display of the capital cherry trees of this year is but a happy, distant memory and the gardens of Washington have that hot, exhausted look of August, escaping into a rare gardening book is in order. The Cullman Library has a survivor of an ephemeral form of publication—nursery trade catalogs—that are valuable not only for their pictures (documenting different techniques of illustrating processes) but as research sources on introduction of plants into the trade as well as trends in horticultural fashion. L. Boehmer & Co. in Yokohama, Japan, produced for the 1899-1900 season the Catalogue of Japanese lilybulbs, iris and other flower roots, trees, shrubs, plants, seeds, etc.