Amid the manuscripts, incunabula and early modern texts at the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology are two bright blue binders that don’t seem to quite fit, in every sense of the word. Too big for the shelf and too 20th century for the Dibner, don’t judge these books by their covers! In honor of National Comic Book Day we would like to highlight two of the Dibner’s most popular more »

To celebrate Hispanic American Heritage Month, the Smithsonian Libraries is honoring Puerto Rican American natural history illustrator Louis Agassiz Fuertes with a blog post in both English and Spanish. The Spanish translation (bottom of page) is courtesy of Angel Aguirre, library technician at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) Library in Panama City, Republic of Panama.

This post was written by Deja Bond, the Kathryn Turner Diversity and Technology Intern in the Smithsonian Libraries’ Web Services Department. Deja is an undergraduate Computer Science student at Spelman College. Her work this summer consisted of developing techniques to create data for enhancing the Libraries’ forthcoming Image Gallery re-launch later this year. My project was to design and code an algorithm to identify the predominant colors within an image. When someone more »

In addition to his art collection, Charles Lang Freer gave a substantial number of books from his personal library to the Smithsonian Institution. These books are wide ranging in subject matter including not only Asian and American Art but also mythology, anthropology, auction catalogs, and travel guides.  The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Library staff has been working to find them in its collection and identify Mr. Freer’s more »

This post was written by James Truitt, intern in the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History. In August, the National Museum of Natural History opened Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend, an exhibition about the tusked whale monodon monoceros sometimes called the unicorn of the sea. Most of the exhibit focuses on narwhal biology, arctic ecology, and Inuit culture, but one section breaks from the polar theme to explore another legacy of more »

In conjunction with the recently opened exhibition “Igniting Artistic Consciousness: Ephemera of Twentieth Century Instructors of the Art Students League of New York” produced by Michelle Ibarra at the American Art and Portrait Gallery (AA/PG) Library, the blog has been exploring themes and artists featured in the exhibit, which will be on display through December 2017. Interested in the Art Students League and participating in Wikipedia? Join us for the Art Students more »

This post was written by Amy Skipper, summer intern in the Smithsonian Libraries Education department. What do you see? What do you wonder? These are the questions students are given for each image in the I See Wonder (ISW) collections, an online resource tool geared toward use by teachers and students to encourage curiosity, foster imagination and analytical skills, and incite discussion in the classroom. During my eight-week internship with the Smithsonian more »