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Libraries Accepting Resident Scholar Applications for 2010

Ferris wheel, Midway Plaisance
The Libraries will award grants to Dibner Library Resident Scholars and Baird Society Resident Scholars in the 2010 academic 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.  The scholars will complete their residencies at one or more of the Smithsonian Libraries’ 20 branches for various lengths of time throughout the year.

Dibner Library Resident Scholars will do research in the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology in the National Museum of American History. The Dibner Library specializes in the physical sciences and technology, and holds over 25,000 rare books and 10,000 manuscripts covering a wide variety of subject areas and time periods, particularly in mathematics, astronomy, classical and Renaissance natural philosophy, theoretical physics, experimental physics, engineering and scientific apparatus and instruments. The collections range from early printed works of ancient Greek and medieval scholars through the Renaissance and Early Modern eras up through the nineteenth century. There are significant works by Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, Galileo, Descartes, Newton and many others. This award is supported by The Dibner Fund.

Baird Society Resident Scholars will do research in other Libraries special collections located in Washington, DC and New York, NY. Included are nineteenth and early twentieth century World’s Fairs printed materials; manufacturers’ commercial trade catalogs, numbering over 300,000 pieces and representing 30,000 companies from the 1840s to the present; natural history rare books; the air and space history special collection for the study of ballooning, rocketry, and aviation from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries; James Smithson’s library; and the European and American decorative arts, architecture, and design special collection, which spans the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. This award is supported by the Smithsonian Libraries Spencer Baird Society.

The deadline for applications to the 2010 resident scholar programs is May 15, 2009.  For application materials and further information about special collections visit our website or e-mail the Libraries. —Liz O'Brien

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