Smithsonian Libraries

A Fall Intern Recap from NMAI and MSC

Below, Jaqueline Baird, one of our latest interns, gives an overview of her work at the Smithsonian Libraries. Interested in interning with us? Check out our Professional Development internships. Applications are open now through March 12, 2012.

 

When I was young, and my parents took me to the library, I was amazed by the stacks filled with books.  All of this information, right at my tiny fingertips.  Worlds awaiting my young and eager imagination.  The library was a special place for me then and continues to be a special place for me now.  As an adult, I knew I wanted to be a librarian.  A person who understands the extraordinary relationship between a person and a book.  A person knows the value of information.  A person who wants to help others.  Through my journey to the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, I have only strengthened my understanding that libraries are special places and librarians are unique people.

 

Museum Service Center Library in Suitland, MD.

 

I applied for the internship in September and was accepted into the program in October.  I was ecstatic.  Here I was, a small town Pennsylvania girl becoming a part of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries.  Every day since has been wonderful and exciting.  I have learned so many new skills to supplement the library science education I am receiving at The Catholic University of America.  From October to December I worked in the National Museum of the American Indian branch library under Baasil Wilder.  Baasil has been an excellent mentor and supervisor, giving advice about the career and sharing his own personal experiences.  While at the NMAI, I performed tasks such as organizing the reading room located within the library.  This was a labor intensive undertaking, but satisfying to know that it would benefit the users in the end.  The room was more clearly defined and uniform.  I also worked within the closed stacks, pulling books to ship to users and looking for missing books which helped me to gain a better understanding of what the collection contained physically.

 

National Museum of the American Indian Library.

 Another project that I worked on was entering artist information into a database available through the Smithsonian.  I would look at pieces of artwork, portfolios, and exhibition pamphlets to gather information pertinent to each author and enter that information into the system.  The final project I completed while at the NMAI was creating a collection development policy for the library in accordance with a final project for a collection development class I was taking.  The class and the internship worked well together for me because I was working so heavily with the collection that writing the policy really solidified the work I was doing and the knowledge I was gaining.  I realized how important the collection development policy is to any library and how it can really help the staff to become very familiar with their collection. Both Baasil Wilder and Bill Baxter were so helpful throughout the process, answering my questions and providing insight into not only the NMAI but the inner workings of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries as a whole.  Overall, working at the NMAI has been a beneficial and wonderful experience.  I am so happy I received an opportunity to work there and I hope to continue to be of service to the library. 

In January, I began working at the Museum Support Center branch across from the NMAI.  Though I have not been there long, I have already begun work on several projects and am excited to see where the rest of my time here takes me.  I am learning so much about libraries from a managerial perspective, working under Gil Taylor.   He shares his advice on the profession and provides suggestions for the rest of my time in school.  I knew that the Smithsonian Institution Libraries would be an amazing place to work, but it was the people who really make it exceptional.  Every person that I meet is so friendly and willing to provide help.  On the days that I go into either the NMAI or the MSC, I wake up with a smile on my face knowing that this will be an exciting day filled by doing what I love with other people who are doing what they love.

—Jacqueline Baird, Intern Fall 2011-Spring 2012

Digitization Dispatch: Ancient Treasure, Supernatural Guidance, and Crowd Control

This month, we feature another new addition from the National Museum of the American Indian's Vine Deloria, Jr. Library into the digital collection housed at the Internet Archive, here.  The American Ethnological Society's 1860 description of an event has all the elements of a great Hollywood heist movie: likable protagonists, the quest for riches, and a lesson on the importance of secrecy, especially when the loot is within arm's reach of a town full of likable protagonists with their own quests to fulfill.

In 1858, two farmers discovered gold while tending corn crops in the Chiriqui province in Panama. Remarkably, they excavated the source undetected for nearly a year before word of the site spread into the populace of nearby towns and villages. Mining the cache in concealed fits and spurts, they reportedly lifted about 130 pounds of gold in the form of idols and relics which occupied the tombs of the ancient graveyard or Huacal. But not every tomb in the graveyard contained the gold that fueled their search. Many simply housed pottery or other, less marketable, tokens. The Antiquary's Magazine: or, Relics of Past Men, Tribes and Nations, reports the farmer's reported ability to distinguish between the profitable tombs and the cheaper versions laid in the divining power of one farmer's son. He constructed an apparatus from a steel rod and a wire while chanting until the rod showed him the way. The report goes on to debunk the swindle but never offers an explanation for the farmers' luck in finding so many valuable pieces. By May 1959, the public had discovered the famers' secret and in the weeks following, nearly 1000 pounds of gold are reported to have been taken from the ransacked graveyard.
That's a movie I'd watch.

The report also includes a more complete (and less spellbinding) description of various relics found among the tombs, bulletins from subsequent meetings, and a description of the Grave Creek Mound in Virginia.

 

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CUA SLIS 2011 Students Tour

19 students and their two instructors from the Catholic University’s Art and Museum Libraries Institute were treated to a tour of the Museum Support Center (MSC) and the National Museum of American Indian’s Cultural Resources Center (NMAI/CRC) on Tuesday, July 27. Of course the libraries from both Centers were highlighted in the tours. This is the third consecutive year that the Libraries' two Suitland-based librarians have hosted this group.

The MSC tour started at the MSC Library for a quick intro by MSC/NMNH librarian Gil Taylor on how the Libraries is meeting the challenges of 21st century library services. The group then was treated to a visit to the Museum Conservation Institute, expertly guided by MCI Tech Info Specialist Ann N’Gadi. At MCI, E. Keats Webb gave a tour of the MCI Imaging Studio, Mehdi Moini showed off some of his sophisticated and expensive analytical equipment. HaeMin Park and Jia-sun Tsang explained about the Paintings Studio with some real-life examples and then Don Williams regaled with the history of various furniture pieces under restoration. The group headed to wet-storage unit Pod 5 and were told many scientific fish tales by Dr. Jeff Williams, and included a look-see with a celebrity fish, the coelacanth. Afterwards, NMNH Collections Support staffer Joel Allen hosted a visit to the huge Pod 4 holdings, and detailed the careful care needed to store a myriad of fascinating objects of all sizes.

Following lunch at the MSC cafe, the group moved on to the NMAI/CRC where they had a general tour of the building led by NMAI Librarian, Lynne Altstatt. This tour included the indoor ceremonial area (which is the only room at the Smithsonian where you can light a fire), the NMAI Conservation Lab (where several Mellon fellows talked about their current projects), and the NMAI Library. At the library, the students were given information packets with materials for both the NMAI Library and the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Lynne discussed the histories of the NMAI and the NMAI Library and also talked about the role of the Libraries at the Smithsonian. Several of the CUA students are hoping for library careers in a museum environment so there were several lively question and answer periods during the tour.  It is always a pleasure to work with such enthusiastic guests.

Check the Libraries' Flickr site for some more MSC tour photos.

—Lynne Altstatt and Gil Taylor

Related articles

• New Arrivals in the Natural History Library/Museum Studies Reference Library (smithsonianlibraries.si.edu)
• Smithsonian Libraries Converts Digital Publications for E-Readers (smithsonianlibraries.si.edu)

Indian Notes Now Available!

No, not the rupee! We mean Indian Notes, a recent entry into the Libraries’ digital collection through the History, Art, and Culture (HAC) digitization project. Available through the Smithsonian Collection at the Internet Archive, access Indian Notes here. Lynne Altstatt, Librarian at the Vine Deloria, Jr. Library at the National Museum of the American Indian, selected this title for digitization because of the impact increased access will have for researchers of Native American culture. She adds, “Indian Notes was a quarterly serial publication designed to present the activities of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation (MAI) and to present preliminary results of those activities. Volumes 1-7 were published by the MAI between 1924 and 1930. Publication of this serial resumed in 1972 and ended again in 1978 producing volumes 8-12. Two indexes for this serial publication were compiled by Museum staff, the first for volumes 1-7 and the second for volumes 8-12. In addition to this serial publication, the MAI also published a monographic series which is named Indian Notes and Monographs. The similarity in these names often leads to problems in finding materials. At the NMAI it is frequently remarked that it would have been wonderful if Heye could have used more imagination in the naming of his publications.”

From a technical perspective, this title is interesting in two ways: it illustrates a bit of museum history while highlighting the principal challenge often faced when digitizing collections — copyright clearance.

Indian Notes was published after 1923, the date which renders books exempt from copyright law. So, why were we able to scan this title and not others? Indian Notes was published by the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. The basis for the collections at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI)  began with George Gustav Heye of the Museum of the American Indian (MAI). Gustav Heye is responsible for the acquisition of tens of thousands of objects during the early 1900’s and onward. Heye is somewhat notoriously known as a voracious collector of everything native in the Western Hemisphere.  Lynn Altstatt further explains, "while it is said that the only reason Heye had a museum is that he was a avid collector and wanted to own the objects, the MAI was run in a scholarly fashion on a par with other  major museums of the period." More information about the collection history at NMAI is available here.

Through the Heye Foundation, the MAI published Indian Notes starting in 1924 and, as mentioned above, in fits and starts, until 1978. In 1989 when the MAI’s collections were transferred to the the National Museum of the American Indian, so were the publication rights that were previously under the purview of the Heye Foundation. Consequently, the History, Art, and Culture  digitization project through the Smithsonian Libraries is able (and excited) to digitize selections published by the Heye Foundation! 

—Erin Thomas