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Author: Erin Rushing

Erin Clements Rushing is the Outreach Librarian for Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. She enjoys sharing the Libraries and Archives' treasures with new audiences and telling the stories from the stacks through various outreach efforts. She coordinates social media and the blog (Unbound), plans tours and manages the internship program. She also handles rights and reproductions for library collection images and acts as point person for copyright concerns. Erin holds an M.L.S from the University of Maryland, as well as a B.A. in History and Art History.

Ramayana of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha

Erin Rushing
May 2, 2016
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This post was written by Leila Prasertwaitaya, a library specialist working at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Hidden amongst the Freer | Sackler Library’s much larger collections on East Asian, South Asian and Islamic art is a small gem-like group of books on Thai art and architecture.  Many of these books are in Thai, but with their magical illustrations of Dvarapala (guardians), gold-painted, bell-shaped chedi, five-headed stone nagas, a 70 cm. tall bronze Buddha head and murals of astonishing density and complexity, the books can open up a world of astounding beauty to anyone with a little curiosity.

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Adopt “Travels into North America”

Erin Rushing
April 19, 2016
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Pehr Kalm (1716-1779), a Swedish-Finnish explorer and botanist, was a student of the great naturalist Carl Linnaeus. In fact, Kalm was one of the many “apostles” of Linnaeus sent out to explore the world, and one of the few who didn’t die in the process. To begin the research that later culminated in Travels into North America, Kalm arrived on the continent in 1748.  Based in Philadelphia, he worked and traveled with Benjamin Franklin and John Bartram, among others. In his explorations of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and two journeys north through New York to Montreal and Quebec, Kalm formed impressive specimen collections, which Linnaeus subsequently used in naming 90 species of plants, 60 of them new to science, in his Species plantarum (1753). Among those new species, Linnaeus named the mountain laurel genus Kalmia for his disciple.

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Unearthing History: Mary Anning’s Hunt for Prehistoric Ocean Giants

Erin Rushing
March 31, 2016
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This post was written by L.K. Ward and was originally published on the Oceans Portal blog on March 21st, 2016.

You may not have realized it, but you’ve been acquainted with Mary Anning since you were young.

“She sells sea shells by the sea shore.”

Remember this grade school tongue-twister? What you probably didn’t know is that this nursery rhyme is based on a real person who not only sold seaside curiosities by the seashore, but became world renowned for her fossil discoveries.

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University of Kentucky Alternative Spring Break at the Smithsonian Libraries

Erin Rushing
March 23, 2016
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Cat and Bailey at their workstations
Me and fellow intern, Bailey Schrupp, at our workstations.

This post was written by Cat Staley, a MLIS student in the University of Kentucky’s School of Library and Information Science program. Interested in exploring an internship of your own? Applications are still open for Summer 2016 projects!

Over spring break, I and four other University of Kentucky School of Library and Information Science graduate students interned at the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington, DC. With our supervisors’ guidance, my classmates and I worked on projects in Advancement, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, Artists Files, Scholarly Communications, and Social Media. Megan Lucy, who spent time in Scholarly Communications, summed up our experience well when she said, “I valued being exposed to so many different aspects of librarianship in such a short time” — which is true because we accomplished a lot in one week!

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Greek Wild Flowers: Dialogues and Diplomats on the Parthenon and the Athenian Acropolis in the nineteenth century

Erin Rushing
March 18, 2016
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This post was written by Dr. Alexander Nagel, Research Associate with the National Museum of Natural History’s Department of Anthropology.

Parthenon
The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis in 2012, Photo: Alexander Nagel.

 

In the fall semester of 2015, I was teaching a course on *Classical Heritage in Washington: Encounters in the Museum* for students from the University of Maryland. Every Friday afternoon around 2pm, students would meet with colleagues and curators, archivists and archaeologists, diplomats and thinkers who work on aspects of heritage preservation and connecting ancient Mediterranean, Near Eastern, and European traditions with those of Washington, DC. The students learned how to tailor and manage research projects, and they developed their own exhibition projects over the semester.

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Ian Cheng: Live Simulation

Erin Rushing
March 14, 2016
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Ian Cheng
Photograph of Ian Cheng from Natt & Dag.

This post was written by Tim Cannon, intern in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library.

Suspended Animation, which opened on February 10 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, features work by six contemporary artists working with digitally generated images. Among these artists is Ian Cheng, a New York-based artist who worked for George Lucas’ visual effects company, Industrial Light and Magic, before earning an MFA at Columbia University. His work is typically based on computer simulations, often lacking a fixed duration or narrative, so that the action unfolds more or less spontaneously, according to an algorithm rather than a plan. Cheng’s live simulation (his term for the programs he makes) Emissary in the Squat of the Gods, will appear in the exhibition.

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