Serena Katherine “Violet” Dandridge (1878-1956) was one of the Smithsonian’s first female scientific illustrators and a supporter of women’s suffrage. Dandridge grew up in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and moved to Washington, more »
Month: April 2022
Between 1849 and 1851, Johan George Heck published his encyclopedia Bilder-Atlas zum Conversations-Lexicon and the work continues to offer valuable insight into life in the 19th-century. With over 12,000 individual more »
To celebrate National Library Week and a new spring season, we’ve put together another round of digital jigsaw puzzles. This time we’re featuring a variety of soothing natural history-related scenes. more »
Before we had online circulation systems, barcodes on books, and automated due date reminders, libraries used paper-based systems for everyday tasks. This required book cards, book pockets, charging trays, and the “ca-chunk” sound of a library date stamp.