Smithsonian Libraries

Smithsonian Celebrates Interns

On June 25, Smithsonian Secretary Clough and many Smithsonian staff attended the eighth annual Networking Reception for Smithsonian Interns. The reception provided interns the opportunity to engage top management, Office of Human Resources recruiters and career representatives in discussions about possible employment and careers at the Smithsonian Institution.

The Libraries has hosted many wonderful interns and would like to feature two from the National Museum of the American Indian Library:

Elviria Aquino (Ohkay Owingeh) is a graduate student at the University of American Indian Arts with a major in Museum Studies. She currently works as a library technician at the New Mexico Supreme Court Law Library and worked as an Education Coordinator during many years at the Okhay Owigeh Department of Education. Elviria possesses an undergraduate degree in Library Technology from Northern New Mexico College. She will be interning in the National Museum of the American Indian Library at the Cultural Resources Center (CRC) in Suitland, Md.

Karen Elizabeth Brown is a graduate student in Library and Information Science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She currently works as an information technician and digitizing project support at the university’s desktop network services and previously was a reference sssistant at the university’s Business, Humanities and Social Sciences Department. She possesses an undergraduate degree in English and Film Studies from the University of Nebraska. She will be interning in both the National Museum of the American Indian Library and Paper Archives at the CRC.—Liz O'Brien

Be sure to tune in to today's webcast!

Portrait of Archimedes, Scientific Identity: Portraits from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, 2003

In the the first in a series of speakers to address the Institution on the future of libraries, museums and archives in a digital world, the Libraries, the Smithsonian Institution Archives and the Smithsonian Office of the Chief Information Officer present  William Noel, Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, "Deciphering Archimedes Palimpsest and Creating Digital Manuscripts."

Noel will lecture on the conservation, imaging and scholarship of the Archimedes Palimpsest, a privately owned codex that has been revealed to contain unique texts not only of Archimedes of Syracuse, but also of Hyperides, an Athenian orator from the fourth century BC, and of Alexander of Aphrodisias on Aristotle’s categories.  Dr. Noel will discuss the history of the book and the history of the project, its digital presentation on the web, and mention other manuscript imaging projects currently underway at the Walters Art Museum.—Liz O'Brien

William Noel
"Deciphering Archimedes Palimpsest and Creating Digital Manuscripts"
June 29, 2009
11:00am-12:30pm
Quad, Lecture Hall, Room 3027

live webcast

Choose American Line!

International Mercantile Marine Company, American Line, ca. 1906, Back cover

The On the Water Exhibit at the National Museum of American History illustrates the important role ships have had in the past and in the present. Before airplanes, ships were the main mode of trans-Atlantic transportation. Why not choose American Line as your transport choice for traveling into the past?

American Line “has been specially arranged to accommodate those passengers who want good food and service, moderate speed and to have the best accommodation the steamers afford at moderate cost.”   Based in Philadelphia, American Line typically ran a Philadelphia-Queenstown-Liverpool shipping and travel service to and from Europe. This turn-of-the-century American Line brochure can be found in the Smithsonian Libraries' Trade Literature Collection. Within its twenty-eight pages, the brochure gives advice for travel with American Line and travel beyond the sea—points of interest, rail and alternative ship companies further east, and a foreign money exchange rate chart. A picture of either an English tourist landmark or one of the five company steamer ships features on the top of each page. Although once a part of the International Mercantile Marine Company, American Line ceased to exist after 1925.—Mary Jinglewski, with assistance from Jim Roan

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

Peter Henderson & Co., Manual of Everything for the Garden, 1896, "Back Cover."

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1594:

    JULIET:
          'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
          Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
          What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
          Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
          Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
          What's in a name? that which we call a rose
          By any other name would smell as sweet;
          So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
          Retain that dear perfection which he owes
          Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
          And for that name which is no part of thee
          Take all myself.

—Elizabeth Periale