Smithsonian Memories Project, Festival of American Folklife Oral History Interviews
The Smithsonian Institution Archives began its Oral History Program in 1973. The purpose of the program is to supplement the written documentation of the Archives' record and manuscript collections with an Oral History Collection, focusing on the history of the Institution, research by its scholars, and contributions of its staff. Program …
Division of Ethnology photograph collection 1
Consists of photographs collected by the United States National Museum (USNM) Division of Ethnology and later by the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology (SOA). Coverage is worldwide outside North America. Most of the items are photographic prints, some in albums. There are also negatives, photomechanical prints, artwork, and newsclippings. For the …
Exposition Records of the Smithsonian Institution and the United States National Museum
The exposition records of this collection provide an account of the Smithsonian's involvement in twenty-two domestic and foreign expositions between 1876 and 1908. The depth of coverage in the records is uneven, but they still convey a wealth of information about Smithsonian participation in expositions, chiefly during the last quarter of the …
William Jones Rhees Collection
The William J. Rhees Collection consists of the remains of his Manuscript and Newspaper Scrap portfolio files. The dates of the material indicate that Rhees was collecting these papers from the beginning of his tenure at the Smithsonian, but the files were not organized until 1891 when he was appointed keeper …
Building Files
This accession consists of information files, original reports and correspondence, papers and articles, and other background material on Smithsonian buildings. Most records document the Smithsonian Institution Building ("Castle"). There are a few files on the Arts & Industries Building and other Smithsonian facilities. These records were compiled by the Office of …
F. Raymond Fosberg Papers
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, including curricula vitae, travel reports, and some correspondence …
Records
This accession consists of working files most of which are drafts of Volume II. There is significant information concerning the National Anthropological Archives, which was not included in Volume II of the Photographic Survey. Some materials are in electronic format.
Grants and Contracts
These 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.
Records
These records consist of Smithsonian Announcements, Office Memoranda, Special Memoranda, Staff Handbooks, and various forms used in Smithsonian offices. The records include correspondence, drafts and other background materials surrounding the creation of these documents. The Announcements concern office name changes, reorganizations, personnel title and duty changes, and the appointment of …
John Peabody Harrington papers
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.
