A variety of repository tours and open houses will be offered on Tuesday, August 14, and Wednesday, August 15. For a complete list of events, please visit the Host Committee Blog at
https://archives2018dc.wordpress.com/.
National Society Daughters of the American Revolution | 10:00 am
Contact: Tracy Robinson |
trobinson@dar.org Capacity: 15. Please make reservations in advance.Come get up close and personal with documents written by America's founding parents, see an exhibit featuring an account of the extraordinary war relief work performed by DAR members during WWI, and find out how DAR plans to commemorate the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment.
NSDAR Archives houses the records that document the rich and compelling history of the DAR, founded in Washington in 1890. Our early-American manuscript collection includes a rare full set of the signatures of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington | 10:30 am – 11:30 am
Contact: Rebecca Baird, Archivist |
rbaird@mountvernon.org | 703-667-3641
Capacity: 30. Please make reservations in advance. Join us for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Washington Library’s special collections and archives. The tour will include a visit to the library’s main reading room as well as access to the closed stacks and the rare books and manuscripts suite. Several highlights from our collections will be on display, along with an up-close look at some of Washington’s books. The library is located at George Washington’s historic home at Mount Vernon, so you may also want to visit the Mansion, Education Center, and museum.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division | 11:00 am and 1:00 pm
Contact: Barbara Natanson |
bnat@loc.govCapacity: 15. Please register in advance by emailing Jen King at Jenking@gwu.edu.
The Prints and Photographs Division offers an open house highlighting visual collections. The Division holds more than 15 million images, including photographs, historical prints, posters, cartoons, documentary drawings, fine prints, and architectural and engineering designs. While international in scope, the collections are particularly strong in materials documenting the history of the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.
Newseum | 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Contact: Katie Dishman |
Katie.Dishman@marriott.comCapacity: 25. Please register in advance by emailing Katie Dishman. Discount admission: $20The mission of the Newseum is to increase understanding of the importance of the free press. Through exhibits, visitors experience the story of news, particularly through the lens of major events in history. It is an interactive museum with seven levels and several galleries and theaters. We’ll start by meeting with the Registrar and Senior Manager of Collections, and after touring exhibits on your own, the Print News Archivist will join the group for a Q&A.
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution | 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Contact: Erin Kinhart |
kinharte@si.eduCapacity: 15. Please register in advance. A photo ID is required to enter the building.The Archives of American Art offers a “behind-the-scenes” tour of the reading room, storage, digitization, and processing spaces. Staff members will offer an introduction to AAA’s reference services, collections processing, and digitization workflows, and share a selection of documents from recent acquisitions.
AAA is the world’s preeminent and most widely used repository dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America.
American Folklife Center | 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Location:
Room G-53, Jefferson Building, Library of Congress – Carriage entrance (ground floor) on 1st St. S.E.
Contact: Judith Gray |
folklife@loc.gov | 202-707-5510
Capacity: 15. Please make reservations in advance.On this tour, staff will give an overview of the collections, of the reading room and listening stations, and of our acquisitions, processing, and reference activities. The American Folklife Center Archive, established in the Library of Congress Music Division in 1928, is now one of the largest archives of ethnographic materials from the United States and around the world, encompassing millions of items of ethnographic and historical documentation recorded from the nineteenth century to the present. These collections, which include extensive audiovisual documentation of traditional arts, cultural expressions, and oral histories, offer researchers access to the songs, stories, and other creative expressions of people from diverse communities and over 160 countries.
Peabody Room | 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Contact: Jerry A. McCoy |
jerry.mccoy@dc.gov | 202-727-0233
Capacity: 15. Please make reservations in advance.The Peabody Room is a special collection of Georgetown neighborhood history, including subject vertical files, photographs, maps, neighborhood microfilmed newspapers, paintings, engravings, and artifacts that document various aspects of Georgetown life. It also features a house history file for nearly every home in Georgetown. Visitors will tour the reading room, archival storage rooms, and see the best bird's-eye view of Georgetown!
George Meany Labor History Archives (University of Maryland) | 6:30 pm
Contact: Ben Blake | 301-405-9096
Capacity: 35. Please register in advance by emailing Doug McElrath at dmcelrat@umd.edu. Directions: Meet in the Marriott Wardman Park lobby to take the DC Metro Green line to the UMD campus. The tour will explore the exhibit “For Liberty, Justice and Equality: Unions Making History in America,” which investigates the intersections between the history of many social justice movements and organized labor. With hundreds of unique artifacts, the exhibit focuses on the labor movement’s involvement with issues of economic equality, including the struggle for the eight-hour day and a living wage; reveals its deep roots with the civil rights’ and women’s movements; and documents lesser-known connections with the movements for LGBTQ equality, immigrant rights, religious freedom, environmental justice and international workers’ solidarity. The tour will end with a behind-the-scenes look at the collections from which the exhibit items were drawn.