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 »
Category: Collection Highlights
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.
Mark your calendar for this year’s Adopt-a-Book events! Join us on April 20th and April 26th, 2022 for a closer look at our collections and the opportunity to support their more »
Today the task of laundry is simple. We load machines with clothes, add laundry detergent and softener, and check settings. But essentially, the modern washing machine and dryer do the job for us. However, in the mid-19th century, long before our modern appliances, it was not so easy. Laundry was time-consuming and labor-intensive, so perhaps this pamphlet describing a “really wonderful invention” sounded intriguing.
In a love letter to his apartment, Xavier de Maistre writes of his walls, windows, and furniture in Journey Round My Room, as if he would rather be there than more »