AUGUST 2010
From the Director
As I write, I'm in Gothenburg Sweden attending the annual World Library and Information Congress. The theme is "Open Access to Knowledge--Promoting Sustainable Progress," and I've heard compelling presentations about the need for literacy, education, and equal access to knowledge. Our website provides much open content -- just look below and read on....Choice Magazine Award
Librarian Diane Shaw has built "Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web" into a wonderful, searchable database that is both international and multilingual. Her work has now been recognized by Choice magazine, which is published by the American Library Association and is the premier selection tool for undergraduate and academic libraries, as an "Editor's Pick" for the month of August 2010. The review calls it "the most comprehensive source for existing digital exhibitions" and sums it up as "Highly recommended." Read More...Use Your Image-ination!
Did you know that SIL has a collection of over 11,000 images available on the web? The Galaxy of Images is comprised of interesting and unusual plates and pages from our collections. Particularly well represented are enchanting butterflies, birds and flowers from books in the Cullman Library, retro cool trade literature from American History and World's Fair material from the Dibner. The images are freely available for use by teachers, students and researchers and high resolution copies of the images are available for a small fee for publishers and authors. So dive in and see what wonders await you! And stay tuned for more updates and improvements to the site coming soon!Research Bibliography
As of July 2010, the Smithsonian Libraries has converted over 4,000 records representing publications of the U.S. National Museum to electronic format for the Smithsonian Research Bibliography (SRO). This represents nearly 100 years of scholarly research at the Smithsonian. The next phase of this project is to link the full-text of those publications to the citations. The publications were taken from the index of United States National Museum publications (1875-1970) and include:- Bulletin of the United States National Museum
- Proceedings of the United States National Museum
- Annual Reports of the United States National Museum (title varies)
OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST
Folklife Festival - Many Smithsonian Libraries staff participated in the Smithsonian's annual Folk Life Festival this year. On Sunday, June 27, library technicians Phuong Pham and Richard Naples were in charge of "Fold, Pull, Pop, & Turn: Make your own Pop-up Card." Children of all ages enjoyed this fun and educational activity! View photos of this event.
FUN FACTOIDS
SI Libraries holds Smithsonian founder James Smithson's personal library of about 250 volumes, ranging from chemical analyses of minerals to the family cookbook.
SI Libraries holds a copy of the world's largest book: Michael Hawley's photographic essay on Bhutan (2003). It weighs 133 pounds, and when open it's 5 feet tall and 7 feet wide!
