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Tag: National Museum of Natural History

Mammals Library roars back to life

East Wall Before and AfterThis post was written by Dave Opkins, Smithsonian Libraries’ Administrative Projects Specialist.

In a remote corner on the third floor of the National Museum of Natural History lies the Mammals Library.  This medium-sized room houses roughly 10,000 volumes on mammalian subjects such as systematics, distribution, evolution, morphology, ecology, and evolution.  There are also a number of related study aids such as dictionaries, atlases, and other resources.  This impressive collection exists for the use of the Mammals division staff and visiting researchers, and is maintained by Smithsonian Libraries.  The room was just closed for six weeks to undergo its first major renovation in over 30 years.  Subsequently, on November 6th, the room played host to an exciting grand reopening celebration that was attended by nearly 100 Smithsonian colleagues.

Honolulu Calling: A Tapa Barkcloth Binding for a 1930 Phone Book from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel

Tapa Cloth front cover for the Hawaiian Telephone Directory
Front cover of the Tapa cloth binder for the Winter 1930 Telephone Directory for the Territory of Hawaii

The Smithsonian Institution Libraries recently acquired a telephone book. Big deal, you say? Ah, but this is a telephone directory for the territory of Hawaii, issued for the winter of 1930. For that reason alone, it’s fun to browse through, to see the old advertisements and daydream about living in the gorgeous Hawaiian Islands, back in the days when the entire list of businesses and households in the territory which owned telephones could be recorded in one slim volume.

But this isn’t just any old phone book. This particular copy belonged to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu, which opened in February 1927 on the spectacular Waikiki beachfront. Known as “the Pink Palace of the Pacific,” the Royal Hawaiian Hotel was one of the earliest luxury resorts established in this tropical paradise. The stylish décor featured at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, inspired partly by the native crafts of the South Sea Islanders, exerted a lasting influence upon tourists from the mainland, who came to associate the good life in Hawaii with vivid patterns reminiscent of exotic plants, birds, marine life, sunshine, and ocean waves.