The Collections Search Center provides easy "one-stop searching" of more than 7.4 million of the Smithsonian's museum, archives, library and research holdings and collections. The access to more Smithsonian collections via this Search Center is increasing over time.
The Smithsonian Collections Search Center is mobile-aware. Users visiting the site with their iPhone or Android devices should automatically be redirected to a mobile friendly version of the site while users of PCs, Macs, and iPads receive the fully formatted pages.
1,045 records of photographs, paintings, drawings, posters, and quilts representing the art, culture and history of African Americans and the Anacostia community.
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1,050 Wall coverings, textiles, drawings, fill papers, decorative arts, embroidery, samplers, borders, furniture and others representing art and design.
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13,142 records of paintings, vessels, ceramics, photographs, manuscripts, sculptures and calligraphy representing art, culture and history of Asia.
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12,031 records of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection.
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16,733 records of aircraft, spacecraft, missiles, navigational instruments, presentation models, awards, memorabilia and art works from the collection of the National Air and Space Museum Collection.
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7,000 records with a wide variety of museum objects from all the museum's curatorial divisions: Political History, Armed Forces History, Home & Community Life, Work & Industry, Culture & the Arts, and Medicine & Science.
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9,000 records of photographs, jewelry, ornaments, Sculptures, Tools and equipments, Culinary equipment, weapons representing art, culture and history of Native American Indians.
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1447 records of Sculpture, Paintings, Containers, Costumes, Textiles, Tools and equipment, Masks, Furnishings, Armor and more representing the art, culture and history of Africa.
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426,810 records from the Department of Anthropology objects collection
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795,338 records from the Department of Botany specimen collection
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219,051 records from the Department of Entomology
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928,252 records from the Department of Invertebrate Zoology
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383,918 records from the Department of Mineral Sciences
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591,021 records from the Department of Paleobiology
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557,757 records from the Department of Vertebrate Zoology - Division of Amphibians and Reptiles
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417,294 records from the Department of Vertebrate Zoology - Division of Birds
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327,412 records from the Department of Vertebrate Zoology - Division of Fishes
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579,233 records from the Department of Vertebrate Zoology - Division of Mammals
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14,702 records of paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs and documents from the collection of National Portrait Gallery. 74,400 records from the Catalog of American Portraits.
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11,976 collection objects including postage stamps, letters and envelopes, postal operation equipment, military mail, postal employee gear, and archival documents.
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40,000 records of painting, sculpture, photographs, prints, drawings, contemporary crafts and folk art from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
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Archival collections contain more than 420,300 descriptions of personal papers, manuscripts, photographs, oral histories, films, works of art and organizational records.
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Smithsonian Institution Libraries Collections:
The Smithsonian's library collections contain over 1.7 million volumes, including print and electronic serials, rare books and manuscripts. SIL collections are particularly strong in natural history, tropical biology, and Chesapeake Bay area ecology; Anthropology; American and African American history and culture; postal, horticulture and garden history; the history of science and technology; aerospace history, astronomy, and planetary sciences; African, American Asian, contemporary, and design and decorative art; conservation science, and museum studies.
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Art and Artists Files:
Over 100,000 files that contain exhibition announcements, newspaper and magazine clippings, press releases, brochures, reviews, invitations, illustrations, resumes, artists' statements, and exhibition catalogs.
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Trade Literature Collections:
Over 400,000 historical trade catalogs, representing over 30,000 companies featuring predominantly American-manufactured products for industry, agriculture, business, and decorative arts. Primarily from 1880-1945, the collection includes product catalogs, technical manuals, advertising brochures, price lists, and company histories.
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Tags are descriptive terms, keywords, or short phrases that are added by users to enhance online searching. By tagging an item you are helping the Smithsonian to provide additional ways for users to access our collections. Blog: I call it Pop, You call it Soda
Simply conduct your search, and then click on the image thumbnail from the search result page. Tag-able records with entry box will be available for tagging. Enter your tags which can be single words or short phrases. Use submit button for each tag. Punctuation is not recommended. You may need to scroll down to see the tag you entered.
The Collections Search Center leverages a Smithsonian-developed metadata index and web services middle-layer that provides the Institution with a unified view across its multiple collection repositories. The Smithsonian name for this index and services middle-layer is EDAN - "Enterprise Digital Asset Network". In developing EDAN, the Smithsonian reviewed a number of commercial and open-source products. The functional requirements included the support of faceted metadata searching, Boolean / simple search logic, synonym/stemming matching, proximity matching, customizable relevance ranking, and highlighting display capability. It also would need to support a wide range of documents and objects from libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) and be accessible via standard web services. In the end, the Smithsonian selected the open-source Apache Lucene/Solr indexing software for the project and built a set of complementary request and delivery services using Java. A common Index Metadata Model was developed to handle the large variety of data formats from SI's underlying collections systems. In developing the model, SI incorporated elements and best practices from established standards such as Dublin Core, MARC, and METS as well as elements reflected in the underlying COTS museum and library systems. Data mappings were performed and processes were put in place to provide regular record ingest and updates from more than 50 Institution data sources (systems and databases). This iterative process continues and the intent is for EDAN to index all major cataloged Smithsonian collections holdings. EDAN and the Collections Search Center are therefore dynamic and continually growing.
EDAN has offered the Smithsonian a flexible and scalable indexing, metadata and image delivery platform to support Smithsonian web and mobile application access to its fast growing online collections. The Collections Search Center, a web application that uses EDAN, has provided a strong, user-friendly search interface, enhanced through Java and CSS style sheets, for navigating these online collections. In doing so, it furthers the Institution's goal of making its collections available to a worldwide audience.