From SSILA Bulletin #162 on the National Anthropological Archives (fwd)

[Koontz John E]

You may want to get your delete key ready!

I'll take the liberty of reading this into the Siouan List.  Any
discipline as dependent on the BAE files of Dorsey and others as Siouan
studies should be aware of the status of the National Anthropological
Archives.  I apologize that some many of you will have seen this already,
but I know that a substantial minority of the subscribers are probably not
SSILA members and might benefit both from seeing this and from knowing
something of the services offered by SSILA, too.  SSILA has a web site at
http://www.ssila.org, maintained at present by Ardis Eschenberg, a member
of this list.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2002 06:47:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: Scott DeLancey <delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Reply-To: ssila at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU
To: ssila at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU
Subject: SSILA Bulletin #162

  THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF THE AMERICAS

                          *** SSILA BULLETIN ***

                 An Information Service for SSILA Members

                 Editor - Victor Golla  (golla at ssila.org)
    Associate Editor - Scott DeLancey  (delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu)

     -->>  --Correspondence should be directed to the Editor--  <<--

__________________________________________________________________________
                        Number 162:  April 8, 2002
__________________________________________________________________________

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162.2  NAA REOPENS AT NEW LOCATION AFTER YEAR-LONG CLOSURE

>>From Robert Leopold (Leopold at NMNH.SI.EDU) 3 Apr 2002:

The National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives
reopened on March 12 at a new location in the Smithsonian's Museum
Support Center in Suitland, Maryland, after being closed to the public
for more than a year.

Researchers who visited the NAA at its former location at the National
Museum of Natural History know that the move was long overdue.  Our
former reading room was cramped and noisy.  Collections storage was
outdated and security was virtually absent.  Our new location in
suburban Maryland, by contrast, is a state-of-the-art research,
conservation, and collections storage facility.  The Museum Support
Center sits on 6 acres of wooded federal land adjacent to the Museum
of the American Indian's Cultural Resource Center.  MSC contains more
than 500,000 square feet of storage and office space, which is shared
by the National Museum of Natural History and other Smithsonian museums,
as well as the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education
(our new upstairs neighbor).  The Department of Anthropology takes up
the lion's share of collections storage at MSC.  In fact, the archives
are the last of the department's collections to be relocated to the
suburban location.  Its ethnology, archaeology and physical anthropology
collections began their move to MSC in 1983, and today nearly a third
of the department's staff of 91 work in Maryland.

The move to MSC has also provided the perfect opportunity -- and the
necessary funding -- to perform preservation rehousing for much of
the collection.  During the past year, archives staff and scores of
volunteers rehoused and stabilized hundreds of thousands of photographs
and placed the majority of our manuscript collection (totaling more than
7,800 linear feet) into new acid-free folders and boxes, in some cases
replacing storage containers that arrived with collections in the 19th
century.  (The NAA began life as the archives of the Bureau of American
Ethnology, founded in 1879, although many of its collections were
produced even earlier.)

At MSC, visiting researchers will now be able to study associated
archival and artifact collections within easy reach of each other,
rather than having to go back and forth between Washington and Maryland.
In fact, the NAA's new reading room was designed from the ground up
with researcher needs in mind, including desktop Internet connections
that allow visiting researchers to check their e-mail.

Visiting the archives at its new location, while somewhat less
convenient than before, is fairly easy, and we think the benefits of
our new location far outweigh the inconvenience.  A shuttle bus stops
at the National Museum of Natural History (Constitution Avenue side)
at five minutes after the hour and arrives at the Museum Support Center
30 minutes later.  The shuttle is available weekdays between 8:05 am
and 5:05 pm.  Public Transportation is also available via Metrorail;
the MSC is a 10-15 minute walk from the Suitland Metro station.  Free
on-site parking is also available.

Annually, more than 600 people visited the National Anthropological
Archives and Human Studies Film Archives when they were last open, and
more than a thousand others visit the NAA/HSFA Web site each day.  To
make an appointment to visit the NAA, call 301/238-2873 or e-mail
<naa at nmnh.si.edu>.  Directions for reaching the archives are available
on the NAA web site:  <http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa>.

                                                         --Robert Leopold
                               Archives & Collections Information Manager
                      Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution
                                                    (leopold at nmnh.si.edu)

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