The papers of Francis P. Conant document his anthropological work and, to a lesser extent, his previous career as a journalist and photographer. Francis Paine Conant was a cultural anthropologist who pioneered the use of satellite data in anthropology. He conducted fieldwork in Nigeria and Kenya, and his research interests spanned cultural ecology, AIDS, malaria, and sex and gender studies. He was also Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Hunter College, where he taught from 1962 to 1995.

The collection is comprised of digital surrogates previously available on the 36 rolls of microfilm described in the NARA publication M1027. These digital surrogates reproduced the records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Louisiana, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–69. The records consist of 43 bound volumes and 10.8 meters of unbound documents. The bound volumes include letters and endorsements sent, orders and circulars issued and received, registers of letters received, and other records. The unbound documents consist primarily of letters and reports sent and received.

This collection is comprised of digital surrogates previously available on the 34 rolls of microfilm described in NARA publication M999. These digital surrogates reproduced the records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Tennessee, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–69. The records consist of 32 volumes and nearly 36 feet of unbound documents. The volumes include letters, endorsements sent, and telegrams sent; special orders and circular issued; registers of letters received; registers of abandoned property; and other records. The unbound records consist primarily of letters, telegrams, issuances, reports, and contracts received.

Ethel M. Albert was an ethnologist whose research focused on communication and speech, and values and ethics. She pursued these themes cross-culturally across a wide spectrum of social classes, ethnic groups and locations. She received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin in 1949 and taught a several institutions of higher learning before becoming a faculty member of Northwestern University in 1966. The Ethel Mary Albert papers consist of writings, photographs and sound recordings produced during the course of Albert's ethnological studies as Ford Fellow in Burundi in the late 1950s; field research among the Navaho; and materials related to a later cross cultural study of fatalism.

This collection is comprised of digital surrogates previously available on the 67 rolls of microfilm described in NARA publication M1048. These digital surrogates reproduced the records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Virginia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869. The records consist of 40 bound volumes and 51 linear feet of unbound documents. The bound volumes include letters and endorsements sent, registers of letters received, orders and circulars issued, and some personnel records. The unbound records consist primarily of letters and reports received.

The Myron Bement Smith collection consists of two parts, the papers of Myron Bement Smith and his wife Katharine and the Islamic Archives. It contains substantial material about his field research in Italy in the 1920s and his years working on Islamic architecture in Iran in the 1930s. Letters describe the milieu in which he operated in Rochester NY and New York City in the 1920s and early 1930s; the Smiths' life in Iran from 1933 to 1937; and the extensive network of academic and social contacts that Myron and Katharine developed and maintained over his lifetime. The Islamic Archives was a project to which Smith devoted most of his professional life. It includes both original materials, such as his photographs and notes, and items acquired by him from other scholars or experts on Islamic art and architecture. Smith intended the Archives to serve as a resource for scholars interested in the architecture and art of the entire Islamic world although he also included some materials about non-Islamic architecture.

The collection is comprised of digital surrogates previously available on the 24 rolls of microfilm described in the NARA publication M1056. These digital surrogates reproduced the records of the Superintendent of Education for the District of Columbia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–72. The records consist of 11 bound volumes and 15 feet of unbound documents. Bound records include letters sent, endorsements, and registers of letters received. Unbound documents consist primarily of letters received and school reports.

The collection is comprised of digital surrogates previously available on the 21 rolls of microfilm described in the NARA publication M1055. These digital surrogates reproduced the records of the Assistant Commissioner for the District of Columbia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–69. The records consist of 42 bound volumes and 18 feet of unbound documents. The bound volumes include letters and endorsements sent, registers of letters received, and special orders issued. The unbound letters consist primarily of letters and reports received.

Photographs taken by Simon Ottenberg in Southeastern Nigeria within the Afikpo Village Group, at the time a group of 22 Eastern Igbo villages (sometimes considered part of the Cross River Igbo grouping) in southeastern Nigeria, while on a pre-doctoral Social Science Research Grant from December of 1951 through March of 1953 and during field research from September of 1959 to December of 1960. Also included are photographs taken from June of 1960 to December of 1960 of Abakaliki, a town and the administrative center of the northestern Igbo people, north of Afikpo. According to Dr. Ottenberg in his publication about masked Afikpo rituals, "The Afikpo belong to an Igbo subgroup called Ada or Edda (Forde and Jones 1950, pp. 51-56), which includes the Okpaha, Edda, Amaseri, and Unwana village-groups, all of which border on the Afikpo, and the Nkporo and Adaeze, both short distances away" (Masked Rituals of Afikpo, 1975, p. 3).

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.