Discoverability Work Across the Smithsonian

The Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum funds research, collections work, exhibitions, programs, and education that further the museum’s mission to research, share, and amplify the histories of American women. Since 2018, we’ve provided funding to 29 Smithsonian museums and research centers in support of 194 projects through the American Women’s History Initiative Pool Fund.

Explore some of the many projects that increase the discoverability of women’s history.

Featured Project

Digitization and Discoverability

Digitization is an essential part of increasing the discoverability of women’s history. The Smithsonian Digitization Program Office partners with others to increase the quantity, quality, and impact of digitized Smithsonian collections. Explore a selection of digitized images from recent efforts to increase access to women’s history collections.

Smithsonian Archives of American Art

Archival Processing of the Papers of Women Artists, Art Historians, and Arts Administrators

The Archives of American Art arranged, preserved, and created detailed, fully searchable, online finding aids for the archived papers of 271 women working in the visual arts to promote their discoverability by researchers and the public.

Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum

Women of Washington DC Speak: Digitization & Cataloguing of Collected Interviews

The Anacostia Community Museum preserved and documented over 300 oral histories, originally recorded on magnetic tape, from which they curated a selection of audio-stories for the museum's website.

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Black Fashion Museum Processing Project

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is working on a four-year project to preserve, catalogue, digitize, and make the Black Fashion Museum collection and records available online.

Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery

Expanding Public Access for Images of Women in Portraiture

The National Portrait Gallery completed a digital enhancement project that allowed a significant collection of portraits related to the history and biography of women to be disseminated with new digital assets and enhanced collections data to the Smithsonian's websites.

Smithsonian National Postal Museum

In the Accounts: The Work and Lives of Female Postmasters as Recorded in Two Postal Ledgers

The National Postal Museum digitized and updated collection records related to two logbooks and a collection of papers that had been used by four female postmasters in rural communities in the United States during the twentieth century.

Smithsonian National Zoo

Women and Wildlife: Stories of American Women Artists at the National Zoo

The National Zoo researched, documented, and re-interpreted artworks created by women at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, D.C

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Digital Artist Biographies and Video Interviews to Extend SAAM's "American Voices and Visions" Installation

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has been enhancing the presence of women in their collection by creating searchable biographical summaries on their website and interviews with artists on their YouTube channel.

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Credit Where Credit is Due: Undoing the Ongoing Erasure of Women’s Labor in Astronomy

In the final phase of a six-year project, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory created a new database to link over 500,000 historic glass plate images of the universe to over 2,500 historic notebooks of women astronomers from the 1880s-1960s.

Smithsonian Gardens

Horticultural HERstories: Amplify the Contributions of American Women to the History of Landscape, Garden Design, and Horticulture Through Digital Resources

Smithsonian Gardens worked with a digital content curator to identify stories from living, museum, and archival collections focused on women’s history in American gardening that could be developed into digital resources for public audiences.

Digitization and Discoverability

Explore Discoverability Projects Across the Smithsonian