This accession consists of the official records of the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Robert McCormick Adams, for 1992 and includes reports, correspondence, subject files, and other materials. Listings in bold and capital letters indicate both the topic of folder contents and major subheadings from the Secretary's Office file plan.

These records consist of the files of Charles Robertson as Deputy Director. They include administrative subject files, arranged by year; exhibition files; and files concerning National Museum of American Art (NMAA) Commission meetings and retired commissioners. Some of the events documented in these records include the ninetieth birthday ...

This accession consists of administrative records of the Office of the Secretary, Robert McCormick Adams, for the year 1988.

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...

This accession consists of records pertaining to offices reporting to the Assistant Secretary for Research as well as includes materials regarding projects funded by the Scholarly Studies Program.

This accession consists of records that document the administration of Irwin I. Shapiro, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) Director, and consist mostly of correspondence, memoranda, notes, publications, reports, project files, travel files, budget materials, directories, program files, recommendations, personnel files, grant pro...

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.

A collection of approximately 28,000 glass plate negatives showing views of a variety of subjects.

The records contain proposals and drafts of contracts and grants, correspondence concerning their acceptance and implementation, budget information, reports about grant-sponsored activities, and information concerning the administration of the Office and the authority of the Contracting Officer. Entries include the following information if ava...

This collection, with bulk dates from 1950-1994, documents the life of Ralph Rinzler and his professional activities as Director of Field Programs for the Newport Folk Festival, Director of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (formerly the Festival of American Folklife) and the Office of Folklife Programs (now the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage), and the Smithsonian Institution's Assistant Secretary for Public Service. Includes personal papers, business records, correspondence, notes, photographs, audiotapes and field recordings.