The collection documents firefighting and fires in American history through newspaper and magazine illustrations, ephemera, and photographs. The emphasis is on large urban fires (New York City and Chicago) and industrial fires in the northeastern United States. There are some illustrations of cartoons, rescues, poems, fires on ships and clippings about great floods in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.

The collection contains primarily photographs and postcards relating to firefighting. Many of the photographs are of firefighting vehicles and apparatus, both horse-drawn and gasoline-powered. The cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore are especially well documented, though other cities are represented, including Hamilton, Ohio; Camden, New Jersey; Dallas, Texas; Baltimore, Maryland; Portland …

A New York bookseller, Warshaw assembled this collection over nearly fifty years. The Warshaw Collection of Business Americana: Fires and Firefighting forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Subseries 1.1: Subject Categories. The Subject Categories subseries is divided into 470 subject categories based on those created by Mr. Warshaw. These subject categories include topical subjects, types or forms of material, people, organizations, historical events, and other categories. An overview to the entire Warshaw collection is available here: Warshaw Collection of Business Americana

The Arthur J. Hines films collection contains audio and film recordings that were created by amateur filmmaker and World War II veteran Arthur J. Hines. The materials document contemporary American Indian lives and includes footage of powwows and of prominent American Indian artists and athletes, circa 1950-1979.

The majority of Pearse-Hocker's momentous negatives give eyewitness account to two weeks of both the mundane and brutal reality of daily life during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. The takeover of the town and the conflict between about 200 members of AIM (American Indian Movement, the Native American civil rights activist organization begun in the 1968) and the United States Marshals Service began on February 27 and lasted for 71 days, resulting in tragedy on both sides of the conflict. Members of AIM along with some local Oglala (Lakota) Sioux from the local reservation took over the town in protest against the United States Government's history of broken treaties with various Native groups, the poverty and maltreatment of Native populations, as well as in defiance against the corruption and paternalism within the local subsidiary of the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs). The siege finally came to an end on May 5 when members of AIM and the assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the US Justice Department Harlington Wood Jr. settled on a ceasefire. Kent Frizzell served as Chief Government Negotiator in the capacity of Assistant Attorney General (Land and Natural Resources Division, U. S. Department of Justice) and later as Solicitor, U. S. Department of the Interior. Among those pictured both during and post-conflict are AIM activists Dennis Banks, Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt, Ted and Russell Means, Frank Clearwater, Wallace Black Elk and Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. A small number of negatives also document AIM's takeover of the BIA building and the AIM Powwow both in Minneapolis in 1970.

This collection consists of six feet of material documenting Porter's many scientific contributions. The following types of material are included: photographs, lecture notes, correspondence, trip notes, newspaper clippings, symposium programs, papers, and periodicals, circa 1930s-1980s.

Collection consists of 202 assembly drawings of locomotives and tenders, prepared to check the clearances and major component parts of the locomotive and retained for engineering reference.

A New York bookseller, Warshaw assembled this collection over nearly fifty years. The Warshaw Collection of Business Americana: Accounting and Bookkeeping forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Subseries 1.1: Subject Categories. The Subject Categories subseries is divided into 470 subject categories based on those created by Mr. Warshaw. These subject categories include topical subjects, types or forms of material, people, organizations, historical events, and other categories. An overview to the entire Warshaw collection is available here: Warshaw Collection of Business Americana

The papers of painter, muralist, and educator Emanuel Martinez measure 6.3 linear feet and date from 1951 to 2018. The collection documents Martinez's career as a muralist and personal life through school records, incarceration records, and other biographical material; correspondence with family members and various organizations in regards to art projects; donations, consignments, invoices, and other personal business records; correspondence, proposals, sketches, contracts, and other material related to commissions Martinez completed for various individuals and organizations; loan forms, correspondence, and announcments related to exhibitions Martinez participated in; artist statements, awards, writings, commencement speeches, and other professional activity material; clippings, exhibition announcements and catalogs, posters, and other printed material; and photographs and slides of of artwork and some personal photographs.

The Smithsonian Institution Festival of American Folklife, held annually since 1967 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was renamed the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1998. The materials collected here document the planning, production, and execution of the annual Festival, produced by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (1999-present) and its predecessor offices (1967-1999). An overview of the entire Festival records group is available here: Smithsonian Folklife Festival records.