As promised in my last blog, I want to provide a research update on my work as the American Women’s History Initiative Curator at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. Today, I’m sharing information about some of the earliest examples of women in science at the Smithsonian.

So far, we’ve identified six women who worked in science at the Smithsonian in the nineteenth century. Their contributions spanned scientific illustration, invertebrate zoology, and anthropology. Below are very brief biographies, and we’ll be creating more resources about these women soon. As we continue our research, it’s likely we’ll find more examples of women in science at the Smithsonian in the nineteenth century. I’ll be excited to share information about them with you when we do!

• Louisa Bernie Gallaher (1858-1917) worked as a photographer at the United States National Museum circa 1878 to 1917. In her work, Gallaher used photomicrography and x-ray reproductions, which were useful to the scientific community. In fact, Gallaher’s supervisor, Thomas Smillie, estimated her to be “the most successful woman photographer in the United States in scientific illustration.”
• Erminnie Adele Platt Smith (1836-1886) worked as a salaried scientific explorer for the Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) circa 1879 to 1886. One of the first women to do anthropological field work and the first woman to serve as an Officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Smith’s research at the BAE focused on Iroquois language, myths, and rituals.
• Mary Jane Rathbun (1860-1943) worked as a curator of Crustacea at the United States National Museum circa 1886 to 1940. She began her career at the Smithsonian as a copyist in the Department of Marine Invertebrates, and eventually became a curator. She was a prolific writer and researcher who is best known for her four-volume series on the crabs of America.
• Matilda Coxe Stevenson (1849-1915) worked as an unpaid assistant for her husband James Stevenson, who was a geologist employed by the BAE; but after his death, Stevenson undertook her own extensive fieldwork, especially at Zuni, circa 1872 to 1915. Stevenson founded the Women’s Anthropological Society.
• Harriet Richardson Searle (1874-1958) worked as a collaborator and later a Research Associate at the United States National Museum circa 1896 to 1913. Searle earned a Ph.D. in zoology from Columbian University, and her research and publications focused on isopod systematics.
• Alice Cunningham Fletcher (1838-1923) worked as a collaborator with the BAE beginning circa 1897, and was also an ethnologist at the Peabody Museum of Harvard University. Her field research and publications focused on American Indian culture and music, and she is best known for her work on Omaha traditions.

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Portrait of woman believed to be Bernie Gallaher, ca. 1880. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 11-006, Image no. MAH-2301.

Portrait of officers of American Association for the Advancement of Science, including Erminnie A. Smith (1836-1886), 1885. NAA INV 02872300, Photo Lot 33, National Anthropological Archives.

Mary Jane Rathbun (1860-1943), carcinologist at the National Museum of Natural History, at her desk examining crab specimens. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7256, Box 8, Folder: 6.

Portrait of Matilda Coxe Stevenson (1850-1915). NAA INV 02870700, Photo Lot 33, National Anthropological Archives.

Alice Cunningham Fletcher (1838-1923) at her writing desk. BAE GN 4510, National Anthropological Archives.

Related Resources 

• "Smithsonian Women in Science," by Elizabeth Harmon, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives 

This weekend, join the celebration for the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage! [via CCAAA]

New Yorker writer Maya Phillips examines the place of the National Museum of African American History and Culture within the present cultural and political moment. [via New Yorker]

CBS features one of the Archives’s top paper sleuths, conservator Nora Lockshin! [via CBS News]

A new monument in New York’s Central Park will honor African American residents of the early 19th-century Seneca Village, which was razed to build the park. [via New York Times] 

Read the latest “Bunny Tinder” research. [via BBC] 

On a visit to Monticello’s kitchens, the Sporkful podcast explores the legacy of James Hemings, a chef enslaved by Thomas Jefferson. [via Future of Museums]

In the name of saving the bees, B. has become a social media influencer. [via Colossal]

Before the advent of GPS, scientists had two ways of determining mountain elevations. The first dates from 1648 when Florin Perier (at the behest of his brother-in-law, Blaise Pascal) took a barometer up the Puy-de-Dôme in France and showed that the atmospheric pressure fell the higher he climbed. The second dates from the 1760s when Jean-André De Luc, in the Swiss Alps, demonstrated that the same was true of the boiling point of water. In time, as mountaineering became a popular recreation and practical necessity, both techniques would be used in ranges around the world.

Joseph Henry, the physicist who served as founding Secretary of the Smithsonian, may never have climbed a mountain or measured high elevations. But he did use institutional resources to spread the word about the latest mountaineering and other scientific instruments. Since Henry read widely and maintained an extensive correspondence, he probably knew that American geologist William Barton Rogers had taken a boiling point thermometer into the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia in the 1830s, and that James David Forbes, professor of natural philosophy in Edinburgh, did similar work in the Swiss Alps.

Henry’s most important informant, in this regard, was Arnold Guyot, a Swiss naturalist who arrived in the United States in 1848, having fled political upheavals at home, and who became professor of physical geography and geology at Princeton a few years later. Henry and Guyot met at the 1848 gathering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and began planning a national weather service to be organized by the Smithsonian. In time, Guyot suggested which meteorological instruments the Smithsonian should purchase and which it should recommend to observers in its networks. He prepared the Smithsonian’s Directions for Meteorological Observations (first edition, 1850). An enthusiastic mountaineer, Guyot told Henry about Victor Regnault, the French physicist who had recently introduced a sophisticated boiling point instrument for elevations, coined the term hypsometer, and worked out the calculations for its use. And, in the Tables Meteorological and Physical (first edition, 1852) that he prepared for the Smithsonian, Guyot included information needed for assessing hypsometrical observations.

Henry was initially leery of the hypsometer, warning a correspondent that it might not be “as convenient as you anticipate.” Henry went on to say: “Its character for much accuracy has not been fully established; and for portability, it has not much to boast of over the Barometer.” But, being an open-minded experimentalist, Henry ordered an example from William Wűrdemann, a noted Washington instrument maker. Finding its sensibility to be “astonishing”—a difference in elevation of four feet was “distinctly perceptible”—Henry took his hypsometer to Cincinnati in 1851, for a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Back in Washington, he probably put the hypsometer in the Smithsonian Apparatus Room where it could be seen by visitors to the Institution.

Once convinced of the value of hypsometry, Henry turned his attention to other matters. He surely knew, however, that hypsometers would soon be available from commercial instrument makers, that descriptions were to be found in physics texts, and that examples were used by such notable national organizations as the U.S. Coast Survey, and the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. He knew that the new aneroid barometers, substantially more rugged and portable than traditional ones filled with mercury, were becoming the instruments of choice for mountain explorations.

Related Resources

• Joseph Henry A Life in Science, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• "The Smithsonian's First Radiometers," by Deborah Warner, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives 
• "The Spinthariscope and the Smithsonian," by Deborah Warner, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives 
• "William Stimpson and the Smithsonian's First Aquarium," by Deborah Warner, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives 

The primordial and professional fear of fire flickers forth again in this year’s Halloween post. A few weeks ago, our friends at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ Fire Research Laboratory permitted us to train another cohort of staff in  a model collections storage environment in their medium-sized burn room, nicknamed “The Beast.”

Into the fiery mouth of the beast, we introduced a controlled experiment. Both on the shelf, outside of, and inside a standard archival box in folders, we placed a set of optical disks (CD, CD-R, CD+R, DVD) with variables of condition and exposure (unsleeved, in Tyvek sleeves, and in jewel boxes, with and without labels, and marks). In the opening minute, you can see the gray box marked “SIA Test” installed to the right, on the third shelf, and towards the front of the room. Watch the fire progress toward and spread over the shelf, and then notice the second sprinkler begin to suppress the fire before it immolates our experiment. Note that we intentionally delayed operation of the central automatic sprinkler so that we could see the effects of an expanding fire; also, there is a powerful fan evacuating smoke out the front and up into a capture hood. 

What to watch for:

0:25 – ignition
1:00 – fire spreads up a plastic corrugated board, and catches materials stored above the cabinet, beyond the sprinkler’s reach, and along materials on the floor in the rear
3:20 – firefall from plastics above the tall cabinet begins
3:44 – smoke fills the room, travelling at the height of our box to about three-and-a-half feet from the floor, even with the continuous draw toward the fume hood
4:00-08 –the plastic board melts and falls onto our shelf, catching afire from hot gases or transfer
4:27-35 – flames are visible immediately adjacent to our box
4:35 – central sprinkler is released; smoke changes in density
4:48 – water drips appear on our box
5:13 – firefighter enters with additional water suppression; smoke changes again in density
5:47 – second firefighter enters, looking for hot spots 

Watching the fire is super scary—especially when you see plastics ignite, melt, spread and feed that great hungry beast. However, seeing the results of fire suppression during immediate salvage offers great relief when you note how the wetted board of the archival box kept the contents visibly cooler than disks that were exposed.  When analyzing the data captured on the ATF’s thermocouple on that shelf, we could see that the immediately adjacent temperature rose to 125C / 257F, closer to that of Tyvek (disk sleeves), and below but nearing the melting point of polycarbonate (disks and jewel cases). The other areas were heated up to 906C / 1663F. Our intern Miguel Resendiz is currently working to assess and potentially recover these disks, and will report back whether it is a trick, or treat, on our hands to share with you in future.

Related Resources

• “An Optical Media Preservation Strategy for New York University’s Fales Library & Special Collections,” by Annie Schweikert, 2018
• Error Analysis and File Recovery Software for Digital Storage Media, Vol. 2., by Joe Iraci, 2019
• "Facing Our Fears," by Nora Lockshin, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives 

What's your format? The National Archives has matched up each astrological sign to an archival genre. [via National Archives] 

If you're sad Halloween is over, read about a spooky chair with all the ingredients of a haunting. [via Columbia Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

A shipwrecked “ghost fleet” in the Chesapeake Bay has become a kind of manmade coral reef. [via WAMU]

The New York Timespays homage to the animals that suck your blood. [via New York Times]

In a very spooky improvement, hundreds of thousands of book citations on Wikipedia will now link directly to e-book pages! [via infoDOCKET]

Ornithologist Kaeli Swift shares crow facts, including the intriguing discovery that they are not scared of Dick Cheney. [via NPR]

Vote for the spookiest collections item at the American Antiquarian Society! [via AAS]

Who gets installed as Secretary? 

When Lonnie G. Bunch III was installed as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, he officially became the fourteenth person in our 173-year history to take on that responsibility.  He is also the first historian (I’m very pleased, but I’m biased) and the first African American to be Secretary.  But his historic appointment is also a return to tradition, as he was selected from within the Smithsonian like the first six Secretaries. Joseph Henry, Spencer Fullerton Baird, Samuel Pierpont Langley, Charles Doolittle Walcott, Charles Greeley Abbot, and Alexander Wetmore, who led the institution from 1846 to 1952,  had each worked at the Smithsonian prior to becoming Secretary. The first Secretary from the outside was seventh Secretary Leonard Carmichael (1952–1964), who had been president of Tufts University. Though eighth Secretary S. Dillon Ripley (1964–1984) had been curator of birds at the Natural History Museum in the 1940s, the following five Secretaries were selected from outside of the Smithsonian. Robert McCormick Adams, I. Michael Heyman, Lawrence M. Small, G. Wayne Clough, and David K. Skorton, who led the Smithsonian from 1984 to 2019, were all new to the Smithsonian, although Heyman had been on the Board of Regents. Bunch assumes the role of Secretary with immense support from the Smithsonian after serving in many roles, including as the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. 

What kind of ceremonies marked their installation as Secretary? 

The first four, Henry, Baird, Langley, and Walcott, died in office, so, out of necessity, a new Secretary was quickly selected, without the pomp and circumstance we know today.  Abbot was the first to retire in 1944—and it was a good thing since he had a very long life (1872-1973)!  For the first time, a Secretary announced his decision to retire, and the Regents were able to conduct a search for a new leader.  

When the first formal installation did take place in 1952,  Carmichael was sworn in by the Board of Regents, taking the oath of office used by heads of federal agencies.  Later research determined this was not legally appropriate since he was not a federal employee. In the afternoon, staff, which numbered far fewer than today, were invited to meet the new boss at a Castle reception. The transition from Carmichael to Ripley in 1964 was publicly celebrated at the opening of the National Museum of American History. The Regents swore him in at a meeting, and the staff welcomed him back at a reception in the Castle.  Since it had been determined that taking an oath was inappropriate, a new tradition began when Chief Justice Earl Warren handed Ripley a ceremonial  key to the Castle.

What do more modern installations look like?

The ceremonies for successive Secretaries have been larger and far more public.  Adams’ installation in 1984 consisted of a Regents’ swearing in and then a “simple, dignified ceremony at 12-12:30pm in front of Joseph Henry Statue” on the north side of the Castle.  All in the Smithsonian family were invited. The U.S. Navy Ceremonial Band played, and Chief Justice Burger transferred the Castle key to Adams.  Chief Justice Rehnquist presided over similar ceremonies for Heyman and Small, including  transferring the Castle key, music by a military band, a rendition of the national anthem, and the presentation of the colors by the Joint Armed Forces Color guard. 

Shortly after President Barrack Obama’s first inauguration, Clough’s installation was held in the National Museum of the American Indian, presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts. It included, for the first time, an academic procession, the national anthem, sung by a very gifted staff member, and music by the Smithsonian Chamber Players.  Roberts presented Clough with the Castle key, Smithsonian mace, and the Badge of Office.  Skorton’s  installation was similar but highlighted the newly renovated Arts and Industries Building and the music program left previous ceremonies in the dust. Skorton is a jazz flautist, as well as a medical doctor and administrator. A friend of his, Wynton Marsalis, played Louis Armstrong’s trumpet from the National Museum of American History’s collection, accompanied by the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. The performance not only added flare to the ceremony, but it also gave Smithsonian employees insight into the interests of their new Secretary.

On November 1, 2019, Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III was officially installed as the leader of the Smithsonian. In a speech, he recognized darker episodes in Smithsonian's past, such as when Secretary Joseph Henry forbade Frederick Douglass from speaking at the Castle, but rather than feel the burden of history, he spoke of optimism and promise. Congratulations, Secretary Bunch! 

English physicist Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (1887-1915) was engaged in research at the University of Oxford, pioneering in x-ray spectroscopy and becoming a rising star in his field, when World War I began. He volunteered for the Royal Engineers and served as a telecommunications officer. On August 10, 1915, at age 27, Moseley was killed by a sniper during the Battle of Gallipoli.

Over a decade later, Science Service was establishing an archive of photographs of scientists, offering copies for sale and using the images to illustrate its own news articles. The service asked the Cavendish Laboratory for a copy of a Moseley portrait that had been published in Nature magazine. When the copy was finally sent, a laboratory staff member appended a handwritten note to the invoice: “I send photograph of Moseley as requested. This is not for reproduction. I am not in a position to give permission for that. I am not clear if you wanted it for that purpose.”

Watson Davis, the news service’s managing editor, responded that, of course, they wanted to reproduce the photograph. We have “a large list of scientific portraits which we are making available to teachers, museums, newspapers and magazines, a function which we consider important in the public appreciation of science. Certainly, Moseley, whose work has had such vital influence upon physics, should be in this collection.” How, Davis asked, might they obtain the necessary permission?

The process took several months and led eventually to Moseley’s family. In August 1927, they heard from Mosley’s mother, Amabel Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley.

As the daughter of Welsh biologist and conchologist John Gwyn Jeffreys, Amabel Moseley supported efforts to bring science to the public. She wrote that “it is a mistake to suppose that any restriction has been imposed by the Moseley family (that is myself) as to making copies or selling them, and I should feel pleased and proud that his photograph should be included in the list.” Emphasizing her support for publication, she included two other photographs that she regarded as much “better” than the rather formal one from Nature.

On the reverse of each photograph were poignant notations in Amabel’s handwriting: “Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley. Born Nov. 1887. Killed in the Great War at Gallipoli. August 10, 1915.”

Moseley’s death did prompt the British government to establish a policy discouraging prominent scientists from enlisting for combat duty in the armed forces. His contributions to physics and x-ray research have been described widely in the historical literature and were commemorated in 2007 with a historical plaque at Oxford’s Clarendon Laboratory.

Related Resources

• Science Service: Up Close posts, by Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• War Correspondents, by Pamela Henson, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives

World Digital Preservation Day and Halloween have one last hurrah with a Twitter bot that will flip a bit on your favorite JPG. Scary! [via David Cirella]

Explore fournewdigitalcollections from the Library of Congress! [via infoDOCKET]

Museum curator Laura Raicovich asks why libraries make people feel more welcome than museums. [via Hyperallergic]

The Louvre would be a lot more welcoming without the Mona Lisa, argues art critic Jason Farago. [via Justin O'Neill]

UC Berkeley has been digitizing audio recordings of endangered Native American languages using fancy technology from physics! [via Humanities Magazine]

Computing historian Bradley Fidler discusses the Internet's “birth certificate,” now held by UCLA Special Collections. [via Gizmodo]

Watch the New York Public Library lions get a bath! [via Gothamist] 

“Stepping across that line was a great honor.”

On June 30, 2019, President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the border between North and South Korea. He stepped onto North Korean territory, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to set foot into the country. But, do you know “that line” Trump crossed has a significant meaning not only to Korean history but also to ecological research?

Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, is a 155 miles long and 2.5 miles wide strip of land demarcating the two Koreas. Since its establishment in 1953 by the Korean War Armistice Agreement, no humans have been allowed to enter this area, making the region an Accidental Wildlife Paradise. According to the Republic of Korea Ministry of Environment, the DMZ is home to at least 5,097 species, including about 106 protected species.

In the 1960s, the ecological value of the DMZ area was already noticed by the scientists who studied conservation biology and natural resources. Harold J. Coolidge, director of the Pacific Science Board of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, visited South Korea in 1965 and suggested a long term survey of “Ecological Studies of Environmental Changes in DMZ.” In the very next month of Coolidge’s visit, Won Pyong Oh, ornithologist and Standing Director of the Korean Commission for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, and Korean biologists conducted preliminary research on biological features of the DMZ region.

Ecological studies on DMZ drew attention from the Smithsonian scientists as well. The international projects in environmental research at the Smithsonian Institution set a milestone in the 1960s with the new Secretary, S. Dillon Ripley. As a former professor of Zoology at Yale University and director of the Peabody Museum, Ripley emphasized the ecological research on wild populations and undisturbed conditions in nature. Ripley’s personal connection to Coolidge and Won also attracted his interest in this ecological treasury. Ripley had known Coolidge since the 1940s when they both served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II as area specialists and naturalists. It was also Coolidge who recommended that Won work under Ripley as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University from 1962 to 1963.

With support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the research project on DMZ ecology was initiated in August 1966. Helmut K. Buechner, director of the newly established Office of Ecology, was in charge of administering the project. Unlike other international ecological projects during which U.S. scientists investigated foreign environments, the DMZ project encouraged close cooperation among the Smithsonian and Korean scientists. For this purpose, Edwin L. Tyson, a zoologist at the National Museum of Natural History, was dispatched to South Korea and was responsible for representing the position of the Smithsonian Office of Ecology to Korean scientists. Under two co-principal investigators, Buechner and Kang Young Sun, professor of the Department of Zoology at Seoul National University, five teams of Korean biologists were organized for three fields of the ecological survey: geomorphology, flora, and fauna of DMZ.

Despite the efforts of Buechner and Tyson, the DMZ project failed to achieve a tangible outcome. First, the layers of miscommunication, including the language barriers and cultural differences, were predominant. As the interests of various stakeholders of the two countries, including the governments, military, embassy, and scientistific communities of both countries, were interwoven into the project, communication between the participants had to undergo the complicated process. The political situations of both countries were also not favorable. The U.S. intervention in Vietnam and continuing tension between the two Koreas slowed down other functions of the governments other than national defense. Most of all, the two countries had different priorities. While the Smithsonian scientists saw the DMZ project as an excellent opportunity to encourage the research on ecology in East Asia, its Korean counterpart sought to bring in foreign capital for scientific research in order to achieve the modernization of the country.

The failed DMZ project reveals the complexity and contingency of an international scientific collaboration. Understanding the common objectives through effective communication is what makes international collaborations challenging but also meaningful.  

Related Collections

• Record of the Office of Ecology, Archival collection, Record Unit 271, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Smithsonian Institution,Office of Environmental Sciences,  Ecology Program Records, 1965-1973.

Related Resources

• Lewis, Michael L. Inventing Global Ecology : Tracking the Biodiversity Ideal in India, 1945-1997. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003.
• “Connecting the Oceans: 100th Anniversary of the Panama Canal,”by Pamela M. Henson, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

It’s something that comes up every year. No, we don’t mean going to the dentist, doing your taxes, or draining your hot water heater (now accepting advice on how on earth one does that). We’re talking about dealing with the possibility of a government shutdown as an organization made up mostly of federal employees.

Although the museums, research centers, and the National Zoo were able to remain open for eleven days into the most recent government shutdown, relying on prior-year funds, employees were furloughed for twenty-seven days beginning January 2, 2019. It was the longest government shutdown that the Smithsonian, and the nation, endured, but it was not the first.

While the first budget stand-off occurred in 1980 under the Carter administration, it was not until 1981 that employees were furloughed for a single day on November 23. During that particular shutdown, only essential federal employees remained at work. For the Smithsonian, this meant that guards, zookeepers, and building engineers continued to work onsite, but the Smithsonian buildings and resources were closed. Employees were later paid for the lost day. 

It was only three more years until Smithsonian staff faced another shutdown under the Reagan administration, but this time for only half a day on October 4, 1984. A series of continuing resolutions were quickly passed, ending any major clashes. Although the Smithsonian received $7.3 million less than requested, the Smithsonian Budget Office claimed that the institution still “did well” for what it received that year. 

Flash forward a few more years, and the Smithsonian suffered through its first multi-day government shutdown, which happened to take place during Columbus Day weekend, October 6-8, 1990. According to Smithsonian’s newsletter, The Torch, “tens of thousands of disappointed visitors” found themselves stranded on the National Mall. Although staff were furloughed, with the exception of essential employees, volunteers came to the rescue, answering a record number of phone calls from confused tourists. The Smithsonian Visitor Information and Associates’ Reception Center typically received around 400 phone calls on a Saturday, but volunteers fielded 1,288 calls during the Saturday of the shutdown. 

And the Smithsonian felt the heat of the 1990 shutdown in New York City, too. Dianne Pilgrim, director of the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, explained that the furlough was “‘particularly painful’ because it cut into the other half of the museum’s budget, which comes largely from admissions and shop sales.” 

But what suffering employees endured during the 1990 furlough paled in comparison to what came in 1995 during a breaking point between the Clinton administration and Congress. It began with a six-day shutdown, which affected Smithsonian employees, between November 14 and 19. 

“In the many years I have been here,” explained Chief of Public Affairs Bob Hoage, “this shutdown seemed to be a little more worrisome because it took six days to settle.”

But that anxiety was not allayed for long when continuing conflict led to a twenty-one-day closure, made worse by a significant snowstorm that delayed the Smithsonian from reopening after the shutdown ended on January 5, 1996. The Smithsonian attempted to resist the setbacks of the furlough during the holiday season, transferring guards to trust fund employees and keeping the National Museum of American History and the National Air and Space Museum open for a brief period in December with only a skeleton staff. 

As a result of this major furlough, the Smithsonian established the Smithsonian Employee Emergency Assistance Fund to provide loans to staff for basic needs during the instance of a government shutdown.

Upon his return in January 1996, National Portrait Gallery management specialist assistant Kevin Greene opined, “I wanted to do something other than sit at home, complain and watch the news, which was quite depressing.” 1996 or 2019?

Twenty-first-century government shutdowns have been no less brutal for employees. On October 1, 2013, the Smithsonian closed its doors to the public, beginning a sixteen-day furlough. Exhibits were delayed. The arrivals of new objects were stalled. An employee was included in a Washington Post article, titled “Spouses of the furloughed, to Congress: Take them back --please.” But jokes aside, employees and contractors faced the financial and emotional consequences of another long government shutdown, and were forbidden from accessing their computers or emails for the very first time. 

Tensions soared during the most recent and longest government shutdown in 2019. Biological anthropologist Sabrina Sholts really represented the hardship of the shutdown to the Washington Post following her return to the Smithsonian. “It came down on me how unfair it was for those of us who just want to do our jobs, who love our jobs.” Sholts continued, “I am very relieved to be back...but even that’s kind of weird. You shouldn’t feel relieved to go to your job.”

Related Resources 

• “History of Furloughs,” by Pam Henson, Smithsonian
• “A Treasury of Smithsonian Shutdowns,” by Pamela Henson, Smithsonian Collections Blog
• “Smithsonian secretary: How the shutdown harms our great cultural institutions,” by David Skorton, 22 January 2019, USA Today
  
• “Who/What Was ‘Essential’,” 28 November 1981, Washington Post
  
• “The Budget Battle: Tourists Lose Weekend, Others Their Patience,” 8 October 1990, New York Times
• “Despite the dead bugs and trash, Smithsonian workers are glad to be back,” by Sarah Kaplan, 29 January 2019, Washington Post

The Digital Preservation Coalition’s BitList 2019 has just been released. [via DPC]

In honor of Manatee Awareness Month, join Zooniverse’s Manatee Chat project! [via EU-Citizen.Science]

NAA Fellow Diana Marsh discusses how visiting servicemembers revolutionized exhibit design at the Smithsonian. [via Diana Marsh]

Gizmodo reviews the decade in physics. [via Gizmodo]

A new tool to explore public-domain images has been published—give it a whirl! [via infoDOCKET]

The New York Timescovers the controversy over European custodianship and repatriation of African cultural objects. [via Michelle Moyd]

Northern Virginia will soon be home to the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial! [via WAMU]

Less than thirty-five miles from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Edgewater, Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay. Today, November 19 marks the anniversary of the 1987 groundbreaking for SERC’s Mathias Lab building, which was named for former U.S. Maryland Senator Charles McC. Mathias Jr. The senator was known for his efforts to protect the Chesapeake Bay from overdevelopment and pollution. 

In 2014 a new, sustainable Mathias Lab opened that was the Smithsonian’s first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Platinum building. The 92,000-square-foot lab contains fifteen laboratories and offices, and the original Mathias building was renovated for additional office space. The project was expected to save an estimated forty-two percent on energy costs compared to a lab not LEED certified.

SERC is home to ecological research in areas from water quality to invasive species to global change. Open to the public, the center offers visitors a quick escape from the hustle and bustle of the city on many trails, access to the water for kayak launches, and various education programs on the 2,650-acre campus. 

I became acquainted with SERC when I started working at the Archives in the mid-2000s, and some of the first born-digital records I handled came from the center. These records include the SERC public website and intranet files and education program records.

The education program digital files include an impressive array of high school student scholarship on environmental research projects related to the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed from the Student Training in Aquatic Research (STAR) program. STAR was a grant-funded collaborative project between SERC and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The program asked area high school students to develop a project, plan field or lab work, do sampling and data analysis, and report the results. The students worked with researchers and educators and learned how to use equipment and research methods in an outdoor environment. Students also presented their findings at a symposium. This Archives collection contains Microsoft Word docs, PowerPoint files, and a video about the program. 

Projects by the students include "The Effect of Surface Material on Organism Plate Settlement in the Chesapeake Bay,""The Effect of Substrate Color on the Alteration in Carapace Hue and Saturation in the Blue Crab, Callinectes sapidus," and "The Correlation Between Water Quality and Diseases in Fish." 

The Archives is making sure all these digital files are properly preserved and accessible to researchers interested in areas such as SERC history, website design in the 2000s, student research on environmental topics, or other subjects that have not been considered yet.

Related Resources

• “The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center,” by Kira Sobers, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• Smithsonian Environmental Research Center history, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• “New Mathias Lab at Environmental Research Center will have low environment impact,”Smithsonian Insider, 9 May 2011