This collection includes postcards from 45 African countries. Subjects include agriculture; animals; artists; body arts; cityscapes; cultural landscapes; dance; education; expeditions; flora; industry; leaders; marketplaces; medicine; military; missionaries; music; portraits; recreation; rites and ceremonies; and transportation, among many other topics.

This accession consists of field notes of Robert B. Neuman (1920-2013), a paleontologist with the United States Geological Survey and the Department of Paleobiology in the National Museum of Natural History. His specialty was fossilized brachiopods. A few field notes were created by John Duane, S. David Berger, and John R. Griffin. Materials ...

Harrington was a Bureau of American Ethnology ethnologist involved in the study of over one hundred American tribes. His speciality was linguistics. Most of the material concerns California, southwestern, northwestern tribes and includes ethnological, archeological, historical notes; writings, correspondence, photographs, sound recordings, biological specimens, and other types of documents. Also of concern are general linguistics, sign language, writing systems, writing machines, and sound recordings machines. There is also some material on New World Spanish, Old World languages. In addition, there are many manuscripts of writings that Harrington sketched, partially completed, or even completed but never published. The latter group includes not only writings about anthropological subjects but also histories, ranging from a biography of Geronimo to material on the history of the typewriter. The collection incorporates material of Richard Lynch Garner, Matilda Coxe Stevenson, and others. In his field work, Harrington seems sometimes to have worked within fairly firm formats, this especially being true when he was "rehearing" material, that is in using an informant to verify and correct the work of other researchers. Often, however, the interviews with informants (and this seems to have been the case even with some "rehearings") seem to have been rather free form, for there is a considerable intertwining of subjects. Nevertheless, certain themes frequently appear in his work, including annotated vocabularies concerning flora and fauna and their use, topography, history and biography, kinship, cosmology (including tribal astronomy), religion and philosophy, names and observations concerning neighboring tribes, sex and age division, material culture, legends, and songs. The fullness of such materials seems to have been limited only by the time Harrington had to spend with a goup and the knowledge of his informants.

This accession consists of records that document the administrative activities of Peggy A. Loar, Director (1981-c. 1991) regarding Smithsonian traveling exhibitions sent on international tour. International tours of exhibitions were common in the 1980's and 1990's, the world economy changed making these tours more expensive. As a result, ...

This collection, which dates from circa 1961-2006, contains audiorecordings from the UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music of the World, as well as related business records. Includes recordings of tradition and sacred music from Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Sudan, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Peru, Afghanistan, Australia, Cambodia, China, Korea, the Solomon Islands, India, Bali, Java, Japan, Laos, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Thailand, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Oman, Syria, and Turkey.

The Archives would like to thank Frederick J. Collier and Martin A. Buzas for their assistance in the transfer of these records to the Archives.

This accession consists of manuscripts of articles edited for publication in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the official publication of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. These manuscripts were published in volumes 20-24 of the journal. Materials also include rejected manuscripts; correspondence of editors, authors, and othe...

These records deal in some degree with Howland's work as Head Curator but mostly describe his assignment as a Special Assistant. Records include wide correspondence with furniture dealers, professional organizations, learned societies, historical preservation groups, and prospective donors. There is also some material documenting Howland's ...

Otis T. Mason served as the first full-time Curator of Ethnology at the United States National Museum (USNM) from 1884 to 1902, as the Acting Head Curator of the Department of Anthropology of the USNM from 1902 to 1905, and as the Head Curator of the Department of Anthropology of the USNM from 1905 until his death in 1908. The majority of the material in this collection pertains to the organization and cataloguing of the ethnology collections of the USNM conducted by Mason in the late 1870s and early 1880s.

These records reflect the growing scope and complexity of the Smithsonian during Ripley's tenure. They document the Smithsonian's changing administrative structure; growing relationships with universities, foundations, and other external groups; efforts to attract more government support for the Smithsonian; pursuit of new initiatives and...