The Libraries and Archives serve Smithsonian Institution staff as well as the scholarly community and general public with information and reference support.

[3] The archives include materials documenting the history of the 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoological Park, 9 research facilities, and the people of the Smithsonian.

The organization's Book Conservation Lab and other preservation efforts work to ensure long-term access to library and archival resources.

Our expert staff and extensive collections are a crucial resource for research and education communities at the Smithsonian, within the United States, and around the world.

[4] The original library was founded by an Act of Congress on August 10, 1846, when the Smithsonian Institution was named a trust instrumentality of the United States.

The Act created a Board of Regents for the Institution, and called for a building to house a museum with geological and mineralogical cabinets, a chemical laboratory, a gallery of art, lecture rooms, and a library.

He created a new position, Director of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, and hired Russell Shank to fill the role.

[1] Shank reorganized the library staff and procedures, and created a modern, unified system with central services and a union catalog.

SIL was granted a seat on the executive board of the Federal Libraries and Information Centers Coordinating Committee.

[5] Several years later, large donations of artifact collections led to the formation of new museums for subjects such as African art, American Indian culture and postal history and a new library branch was subsequently formed for each of these as well.

In 1999, under the leadership of director Robert Maloy, Smithsonian Libraries staff completed a fourteen-year long effort to create a public access online catalog, with 97 percent of their then-holdings gaining digital records.

In January 1970, Richard H. Lytle began a tenure as Archivist which included the 1973 establishment of an oral history program, and the 1976 relocation of the Archives to the Arts and Industries Building.

It offers services on a fee basis to other archives and repositories, including offsite storage at the Boyers, Pennsylvania facility.

The Smithsonian Institution Archives moved into the Capital Gallery Building in August 2006, and has "a state-of-the-art storage facility; a reading room; several special viewing/listening rooms; processing and preservation space; digital imaging and audiovisual processing facilities; an oral history interview studio; and a conservation lab.

Housed in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries’ Research Annex in Landover, Maryland, the ALM Collection is a growing body of largely grey literature in the form of government manuals, reports, studies, and surveys capturing the history and evolution of civil aviation.

They include publications, images, collections and objects such as online exhibits, webcasts, finding aids, digital versions of print editions, bibliographies, etc.

This international database features over 3,000 links to online exhibitions from libraries, archives, historical societies, museums, and other scholarly institutions around the world.

[32] The Smithsonian Libraries and Archives offers research opportunities for historians, librarians, pre-doctoral and post-doctoral scholars wishing to conduct research in the history of science and technology or in areas pertaining to other special collections: Also offered are internship opportunities for students and recent graduates who wish to gain experience in archives or museum libraries.