Collections
The NAA is the only archival repository in the United States dedicated exclusively to preserving ethnographic, archaeological, and linguistic field notes, physical anthropological data, photographs, sound recordings and other media created by American anthropologists. The collection includes documents such as field notes, journals, manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, maps, sound recordings, all compiled by prominent researchers from the Smithsonian or other research institutions. Spanning over 150 years of American history and world history, materials held in the archives include nearly 635,000 photographs, 20,000 works of indigenous art, and 11,400 sound recordings.
In 2010, the NAA received a Save America's Treasures grant to preserve manuscripts relating to endangered languages. These manuscripts include vocabularies, narratives, and other texts representing approximately 250 American Indian languages. Many photographs and manuscript pages from the NAA collections, including 8,200 pages of Cherokee language materials, have been scanned and are available online for research through SIRIS, the Smithsonian’s online catalog.
Read more about this topic: National Anthropological Archives
Famous quotes containing the word collections:
“Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)