Smithsonian Libraries
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At the center of research across the Smithsonian are the specialized branches and librarians of the Smithsonian Libraries. The collection contents and staff play a key role in helping the Smithsonian’s research and curatorial staff make sense of the museums’ innumerable, often unique, objects and their cultural and historical contexts. Scientists depend on the Libraries to support investigations into climate change, biodiversity, object conservation, ecology, and many other fields. The Smithsonian Libraries are a hidden national treasure, where experts come to test and expand knowledge and where America and the world can turn for authentic answers.
The network of 21 specialized research libraries that make up the Smithsonian Libraries provide the Institution’s museums and research centers with resources and services that are as diverse and deep as the collections, exhibits, and scholarship they support. They truly span the range of scientific and cultural pursuits of humanity from aerospace, anthropology, and art history to business history and botany, cultural history, design, philately, zoology, and much, much more.