Smithsonian Collections Digitization

The 2024 Smithsonian Digitization Program Office's Annual Report is now available!

Follow this link to read all about our office's recent endeavors
https://dpo.si.edu/sites/default/files/2025-02/web-2024_dpo_annual_report.pdf

Thanks to Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's Department of Invertebrate Zoology for a great (and properly accessorized) party to mark the end of our freshwater mussel imaging project yesterday! We’re grateful to all of our team and partners who supported a successful project and glad to see those who could with us.

139,794 Images and 48,196 Specimens digitized!

We’re back from our first time at Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting in Chicago, where we were invited to participate on a panel with our Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and Getty colleagues to discuss our collaborative work on the Johnson Publishing Company photographic archive.

Acquired in 2019 by a consortium of philanthropic and cultural heritage organizations, the Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) Archive is co-owned by the Getty Research Institute (GRI) and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).

Dating from 1942, when John H. and Eunice W. Johnson founded the company, to the 21st century, the JPC Archive contains over 4.5 million photographs of published and unpublished works documenting the Black experience, some of which were featured in JPC’s 14 magazines, most notably Jet and Ebony. In addition to the historically significant events and behind-the-scenes moments depicted, the Archive presents an unmatched and unique record of many facets of the life, work, and contributions of Black individuals, communities, groups, organizations, and businesses.

In this session, representatives from the Getty and Smithsonian discussed the partnership and highlight some of the many intricacies of the project including full-scale archival processing, data modeling, mass digitization, and public access.

For this , please enjoy a peek into our current collaboration with the Department of Invertebrate Zoology at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History ! Over 120,000 images from approximately 45,000 specimens in the Smithsonian's historic collection of freshwater mussels will help researchers better understand the distribution of species over time and support these at-risk animals thriving into the future.

Smithsonian Mass Digitization: National Museum of Natural History, Freshwater Mussels Collection We're currently collaborating with the Invertebrate Zoology Deparment at the National Museum of Natural History to digitize over 45,000 specimens in their hi...

For this Throwback Thursday, a look into the not-so distant past at a collaboration with Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's Department of Entomology! Between June - October 2022, over 107,000 new images of damselflies and dragonflies were captured, and it was exciting to see Entomology staff spotlight this project yesterday at the NCP Collections Share Fair.

We are happy to welcome Corey DiPietro to the Informatics Team! Corey worked for many years in the National Museum of American History and will now work in projects to create and enhance digital records of all the units of the .

Smithsonian Gardens working with Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum and DPO digitized several turn of the century pressed floral albums by schoolgirls. 3 albums comprising 175 pages of specimens were imaged in high resolution and will be available soon online.

Spring is coming early this year with digitization at Smithsonian Gardens of 650 hand colored glass lantern slides from the Garden Club of America by DPO Imaging Services/ Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.

This collection was pioneered and presented by female Gardens Club of America members to help educate the public in the 1920s on gardens conservation and national park management and appreciation.

Assisting in the celebration of Women's History Month is Laura Whitfield, our newest Imaging Services photographer. She will be working on projects specifically for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum (SAWHM) under the guidance of the Collections Digitization Program.

Digitization projects from multiple museums across the Smithsonian Institution provide inspiring SAWHM specific digital content. Expanding our scope of knowledge to enhance research capacities, and possibly lead ways to help share and amplify the role of women in history.

Laura comes to us with extensive still life photography experience and is proud to be part of a team that preserves female-centric stories through her lens.