The Libraries has partnered with the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center’s (SEEC) Kindergarten Program to bring excellence and innovation into early childhood education with a dynamic educational initiative in a museum-based more »
Category: Special Collections
Maria Sibylla Merian was the daughter, sister, and wife of artists and engravers. She lived a most unconventional life: she became an artist herself, left her husband to join a more »
Meghan Doherty, one of Smithsonian Libraries 2009 Dibner Resident Scholars, began her studies at the Dibner Library in the National Museum of American History on January 5. Her research tenure more »
Smithsonian Libraries is pleased to announce its new Head of the Special Collections Department, Lilla Vekerdy. Vekerdy has over 20 years of experience in rare books preservation and management. She more »
Portrait of Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), BiologistOriginally uploaded by Smithsonian Institution “The cultivation of natural science cannot be efficiently carried on without reference to an extensive library.” (1)– Charles Darwin, more »
The Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology is celebrating its reopening today with a small event and presentation by the new Head of Special Collections, Lilla Vekerdy. more »
The scientific names assigned to animals often have intriguing origins, which can be revealed by books in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries’ collections. The Pallas’s Cat of central Asia, for instance, is named after German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811), the first person to publish a detailed description of the animal. Although he was not fully aware that the curious creatures he had seen during his travels were a new species, Pallas’s account and his accompanying illustration were definitive enough to establish the foundation for the scientific record. Pallas spent much of his life in Russia, where he conducted expeditions in search of new and unusual animals and plants. In his account, Travels through the southern provinces of the Russian Empire in the years 1793 and 1794 (originally published in German in 1799-1801), he speculated that the mysterious felines known today as the Pallas’s Cat (Felis manul) were the half-wild offspring of a local nobleman’s pet:
