Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Libraries

A charred fragment of one of the Herculaneum Scrolls.

New Research

Metallic Ink Discovered in Ancient Scrolls Buried by Mount Vesuvius

New discovery may help researchers read ancient scrolls

A red pigment reference from the Forbes Pigment Collection helped prove that a supposed Jackson Pollock painting was a fake.

This Could Be the World’s Most Colorful Library

Harvard’s Forbes Pigment Collection preserves some of history’s most precious colors—and helps conserve the world’s greatest art

Shackleton brought everything from trashy novels to accounts of Arctic rescues with him to Antarctica.

Cool Finds

Historians Finally Figured Out What Was on Shackleton’s Bookshelf

The brave explorer likely found solace in his library

This photograph of Harper Lee was taken in 1961, one year after she wrote for the Grapevine.

Five Things to Know About Harper Lee

The spunky and eloquent author is dead—but her legacy lives on

New Research

These Glass Discs Can Store Data for Billions of Years

“Five-dimensional” data discs could be the future of information storage

Mozart and Salieri—rivals or BFFs?

Cool Finds

A German Composer Uncovered a Collaboration Between Mozart and Salieri

Their epic rivalry might not have been all that

Students pledged to speak only Latin, Greek or Hebrew in each other's company in this 1712 note.

Cool Finds

Read About Drama, Politics, Breakfast in These Newly Digitized Colonial Documents

An ambitious Harvard University project brings history to life, archiving nearly half a million documents online

Is your book overdue? Help may be in sight.

Cool Finds

This Library System Is Willing to Forgive Your Fine…Just This Once

Library scofflaws take note: Amnesty programs are gaining steam throughout the U.S.

Chuck Brown, known as the grandfather of go-go, died in 2012. Now, a go-go archive is being assembled in his honor.

Trending Today

You Can Help Build the World’s First Go-Go Archive

Librarians are calling for the preservation of Washington, D.C.’s iconic musical genre

Library patrons will soon be able to check out ukuleles in libraries across Pennsylvania.

Cool Finds

Pennsylvania Libraries Will Let You Check Out a Ukulele

Read, strum, repeat

The New York Public Library maintains the world's largest collection of tobacciana, materials related in some way to tobacco's history, use, and mystique.

Libraries’ Surprising Special Collections

Tucked away in libraries across the country are unexpected archives and world-class treasures

Page 11 of 11