The Smithsonian Libraries opens its new exhibition “Whales: From Bone to Book” in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History May 25. This exhibition is a collaboration between the Libraries and the museum’s Department of Paleobiology. “Bone to Book” will be on display through April 2014.
Please join us for:
“Unlocking Taxonomic Literature II using Linked Open Data”
a free lecture featuring Joel Richard
Thursday, May 16, 2013, 12:00pm-1:00pm
S. Dillon Ripley Center, Lecture Hall, Room 3027
A few months ago, a ceremony announced the Libraries’ electronic edition of the Escadrille N.124 Journal de Marche et Operations (i.e., the “combat logs”) of the legendary squadron of American aviators who served in the French Air Force during World War I, known more affectionately as the Lafayette Escadrille.
The Smithsonian Libraries will award grants to Dibner Library Resident Scholars and Baird Society Resident Scholars for the 2014 calendar year. These competitive short-term grants are offered for one to six months to historians, librarians and bibliographers, as well as predoctoral and postdoctoral students, with an approved research project.
Applications are now open for summer Professional Development Internships! Paid internship opportunities at the Smithsonian Libraries are designed for current graduate students or recent graduates interested in working in research and/or museum libraries. This year, applicants may select from six projects. These projects are in a wide variety of areas, including preservation, art librarianship and cataloging.
Entrepreneur and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie once said that “a library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.”
The Smithsonian Libraries are passionate about renewing our commitment to serving the global community as a public and academic library system. We have enhanced our digital accessibility, public programs, and events while adding new fellowship opportunities, resulting in more in-person traffic than ever before. This increase in activity is made possible thanks to the continued support of our dedicated donors.
On Friday, September 28th, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s Head Librarian Anna Brooke gave a presentation at the NY Art Book Fair’s Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference on how artists’ books can be used in conjunction with a museum’s collection to provide greater insight into an artist’s body of work. Work studies student Lauren Zook, currently enrolled in the George Mason – Smithsonian collaborative masters program for decorative arts, aided in developing the presentation and has written a summary of it for our blog.
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library has acquired an unusual type of book—the artist’s book. Some of these books are mass publications and others are unique and vary in size and shape. A new initiative has been made by the Smithsonian Libraries to make these artists’ books more accessible to the public and protect them from damage. Most of the artists’ books at the Hirshhorn Library were produced by artists represented in the museum’s collection. These artists’ books can provide new insight to an artist’s work, show similar themes, and can even be shown in galleries as autonomous works of art.