This collection documents Cowan's career as a systematic botanist at the New York Botanical Garden, USNM, and NMNH. Included are incoming and outgoing correspondence concerning the identification of specimens, the preparation of scientific papers and monographs, and professional activities; a subject file mostly documenting his research; ...

These records document departmental involvement in and administration of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT), U.S. chapter. The IAPT was founded in 1950 to carry out projects of interest and concern to systematic botanists which require or profit from international cooperation. IAPT is responsible for the establishment ...

This collection consists of grant audits, progress reports, correspondence and travel files. See Record Unit 180 for similar materials.

This accession consists of the records of curator emeritus Richard W. Thorington (1937-2017), who specialized in systematics, evolution, anatomy, and functional morphology in mammals, especially of primates and squirrels. The records primarily document Thorington's curatorial activities in the Division of Mammals at the National Museum of Natu...

These records document the development of automated data management systems for the collections of NMNH and other museums, the establishment of data handling and storage standards, and the consolidation of administrative structures to control automation policy at the Smithsonian. They include documentation of the Health, Education and Welfare ...

This accession consists of papers created by F. Raymond Fosberg while with the International Biological Programs (1960s), the National Research Council (1960s), the Smithsonian Institution as Special Advisor for Tropical Biology (1970s), and the U.S. Geological Survey (1950s). Papers also include personal files, with dates circa 1960-1985, ...

This record unit contains a variety of records documenting the planning, design, and production of permanent and temporary exhibitions at the NMNH. It also contains smaller amounts of records concerning exhibitions held at the National Museum of History and Technology, National Air and Space Museum, National Collection of Fine Arts, Anacostia ...

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.

These records primarily document the operation of the Department of Botany under Head Curators Ellsworth Paine Killip, 1947-1950, and Jason Richard Swallen, 1950-1964, and Chairmen William L. Stern, 1965-1967, Mason E. Hale, Jr., 1967-1970, Edward S. Ayensu, Dieter C. Wasshausen, Mark M. Littler, and Laurence E. Skog. Records created prior ...

This finding aid was digitized with funds generously provided by the Smithsonian Institution Women's Committee.