Turning the Book Wheel
It’s official! The Smithsonian Institution is partnering with the Digital Public Library of America. The Smithsonian, like the National Archives and Records Administration, will be a “content hub” for the DPLA - providing metadata that will allow the DPLA to search and link to our online collections.
Not to brag (much) but the Smithsonian Libraries’ director, Nancy Gwinn, was instrumental in making this partnership a reality and Assoc. Director Martin Kalfatovic is one of the DPLA technical workstream co-chairs. Pictured above on the DPLA website is library book scanner extraordinaire Stefaan Hurts.
SUBMISSION: Cabinet of Wonders I created for the library at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota
Holiday Book Tree At The Keele University Library
Quick, where’s our extra set of the NUC??
This year we digitized 1665 items from our History, Art, and Culture library collections including many gems that have appeared sporadically on this tumblr. This is in addition to the over 2000 items we scanned for the Biodiversity Heritage Library. All are available on the Internet Archive for free (as in beer) for reading, downloading, reusing and remixing. We’ll keep on digitizing until someone tells us to stop (in which case we will ignore them) or until we run out of books or money.
Shout out to Erin, Gilbert, JJ, Daniel, David, Stefaan and all the SIL staff who feed the scanning beast.
Happy Birthday Smithsonian! Today we’re 166!
An Act of Congress dated 10 August 1846 established the Smithsonian Institution as a trust instrumentality of the United States, created a Board of Regents, and called for a building to house a museum with geological and mineralogical cabinets, a chemical laboratory, a gallery of art, lecture rooms, and a library. The Board of Regents selected American physicist Joseph Henry as the first Secretary of the fledgling enterprise and directed Henry to hire Charles Coffin Jewett, well-known bookman and librarian at Brown University, as the first Assistant Secretary in charge of the library.
Pictured above is Jewett and the rare book room formerly located in the Arts & Industries building named after him.
Do’s and Don’ts in the Library, a humorous guide to what not to do with the books.
DISCLAIMER: No library collections were harmed in the making of this video.
