This week, September 30th to October 6th, marks the 30th anniversary of the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, celebrating the freedom to read.
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.
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.
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:
This post was written by Alyssa Penick, Intern at The Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology.
The Dibner Library for the History of Science and Technology recently acquired a nineteenth-century navigation atlas, The Marine Atlas, or a Seaman’s Complete Pilot for all the Principal Places in the Known World, which was published in London in 1826 by John William Norie. Currently under restoration, this large folio contains forty copperplate engravings of marine charts and depicts every ocean, sea, and coastline then known. The Dibner’s copy of The Marine Atlas is the seventh edition of the atlas and was bound in New York by Henry Spear in 1856. No other copies of Norie’s Marine Atlas are held by public collections, making this addition to the library particularly exciting.