National Museum of American History - Smithsonian
http://americanhistory.si.edu

The Archive Center of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is ASB's longest running host -- five years in a row! In 2005, four SI students spent their ASB week at NMAH.

The Archives Center is full of unique and interesting collections that are often poorly preserved or neglected altogether for lack of human resources to properly organize and treat them. As such, the students were quickly put to work organizing, classifying, identifying and preserving a number of the collections. The students ventured into these various tasks with great energy and interest.

Sarah Cookingham worked with the Scurlock Photographic Studio Records Collection. She custom-built frames in order to prevent negatives from sliding around in their freezer storage boxes.

Ricah Marquez worked with the Aladdin Industries Collection. She rehoused and encapsulated original news clippings, catalogs, flyers, advertisements, and other ephemera from Aladdin’s history.

Erin Podolsky worked on the Charles Atlas Collection. Her task was to process and arrange the materials. At the end of the week, she wrote and presented a finding aid for the collection.

Allison Zaleski was given a few boxes of the Glen Fishback Collection (the entire collection is 30 cubic feet!). She spent the better part of her week preparing the collection for processing, knowing that this would be a significant step forward for a collection of that size.

Click to see what ASB students did at NMAH in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004.

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