The end of an era has come to the Smithsonian Libraries and a new one begins! The current model of a library, with a physical location, books and journals on the shelves and a librarian to manage it all is so 2011. A hip, new model of a ‘ librarian-as-reference-resource-person-embedded-in-research-department’ has come for the National Zoological Park/Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in 2012!
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It might be a little confusing to keep up with the digital humanities collection that provides the basis for most of these posts. The collection that began as HAC (History, Art, and culture), spent a brief adolescence as SHAC (Smithsonian History, Art, and Culture), has now matured into the CHL (rhymes with BHL!). The Cultural Heritage Library is still available here, and still includes the same content from the history, art, and culture locations; the name changes simply reflect the evolving nature of this arm our digitization practices. Currently at 3,670 items, the CHL features new additions every week.
–This post was contributed by Kimberly Lesley, American Art and Portrait Gallery Library intern, summer 2012.
This summer I had the opportunity to work on two projects at the Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library: evaluating titles from the print reference section and selecting public domain titles for digitization. The majority of time was spent on the former, evaluating once heavily relied upon indexes and reference titles against databases and open access online resources. As I paged through volumes of reference titles I was grateful for the vast amounts of information available online with a few keywords and a couple clicks.
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.
The Smithsonian Libraries would like to thank all who attended and supported our first Adopt-a-Book event held at the Smithsonian Castle on Thursday, September 13. Over 25 books were adopted from our Cooper-Hewitt National Design Library, Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library for Natural History, and the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology.
Wikipedia is coming for a visit! On Friday, October 12, the Libraries, in cooperation with other Smithsonian units, will welcome local Wikipedia editors for a day full of creating and editing articles using Smithsonian Libraries resources. With American Archives Month, National Book Month, and Open Access Week, October lends itself to an event for Wikipedia Loves Libraries. In its second year, Wikipedia Loves Libraries is a campaign to bring Wikipedia and libraries together with on-site events, and help build lasting relationships between libraries and their local Wikipedian community. If you edit Wikipedia or want to learn how, we would love for you to come! Check out the Wikipedia Meetup page for more info.
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.