Reports of Programs and Services 



81 



tiacive focuses on science and will include transactions and 

 proceedings of scientific societies. SIL loaned volumes of the 

 Royal Society transactions and proceedings ro JSTOR for 

 digitizing as part of the enterprise. 



The exhibition ""Make the Dirt Fly!' Building the Panama 

 Canal" opened simultaneously in the Libraries Gallery in the 

 Museum of American History and on-line at www.sil.si.edu in 

 November. Panamanian Ambassador Guillermo Ford spoke at 

 the opening of the yearlong exhibition. Bucyrus International, 

 Inc, the Dames & Moore Group, the Smithsonian Tropical 

 Research Institute, and The American Society for Macro Engi- 

 neering as well as a number of individuals provided exhibition 

 support. In May 2000, the Libraries presented a free public 

 program on "The Panama Canal and the American Imagina- 

 tion" in conjunction with its Panama exhibition. Stanley 

 Heckadon of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Insriture, 

 William E. Worthington of the National Museum of Ameri- 

 can History, novelist Eric Zencey, and environmental historian 

 Paul Sutter participated in a panel discussion in the 

 Carmichael Auditorium, Museum of American History. 



Smithsonian Institution Traveling 

 Exhibition Service (SITES) 



Anna R. Cohn, Director 



The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service 

 (SITES) is the largest traveling exhibition service in the world. 

 Its mission is to extend the Smithsonian collections, research, 

 and exhibitions to "sites" across the nation and beyond. SITES 

 organizes and circulates exhibitions of all shapes and sizes on 

 the arts, sciences, and humanities. Since its firsr exhibition 

 went on the road in 1952, SITES has traveled thousands of ex- 

 hibitions for the education and enjoyment of museum-goers in 

 every state and several foreign countries. 



To expand the Smithsonian's outreach, SITES has contin- 

 ued to seek out alternative partners and spaces to create and 

 host exhibitions. For example, throughout its tour, the exhi- 

 bition "Vanishing Amphibians" traveled to science centers, 

 conferences, and libraries in order to reach audiences that 

 might not visit traditional science or natural history muse- 

 ums. SITES also continues to work with the American 

 Library Association to present poster versions of exhibitions 

 for display in libraries across the country. 



Now in its eighth year of sharing the Smithsonian's cul- 

 tural resources with rural America, Museum on Main Street 

 is a one-of-a-kind cultural project. It is a partnership be- 

 tween the Smithsonian, Federation of State Humanities 

 Councils, and state humanities councils that serves small- 

 town museums and residents of rural America. Museum on 

 Main Street exhibitions, designed for small cultural insti- 

 tutions, focus on broad topics of national history and give 

 host museums the opportunity, with support from state hu- 

 manities councils, to create their own educational 

 programs, cultural activities, and exhibitions that center on 

 local heritage. 



Museum on Main Street exhibitions have traveled to 

 nearly 200 towns with populations of 500 to 20,000 in 26 

 states, inspiring heightened awareness of local histories, such 

 as World War II homefront experiences. While hosting the 

 SITES exhibition, "Produce for Victory: Posters on the 

 American Homefront, 1941— 1945," rural communities 

 across the country have collected numerous period photos 

 and oral histories of veterans and homefront heroes. These 

 communities involve the entire community through USO 

 recreations, scrap metal drives, victory gardens, and even 

 Rosie the Riveter look-alike contests. 



Another Museum on Main Street exhibition, "Barn 

 Again! Celebrating an American Icon," has brought record- 

 breaking audiences to small-town museums and triggered 

 historic barn preservation efforts, barn tours, and music fes- 

 tivals; and in South Dakota a barn poster contest sponsored 

 by the 4-H had more than 500 entries. In Lindsborg, Kansas 

 (pop. 3,155), museum attendance shot up 132 percent over 

 the previous year when they hosted "Barn Again!" and gift 

 shop sales when up 139 percent. And, in Colby, Kansas 

 (pop. 5,544), the 5,600 visitors who saw "Barn Again!" in 

 the seven-week period represents half of the number of visi- 

 tors for the entire previous year; 75 percent were first-time 

 visitors, and 53 percent drove 100 miles or more to visit 

 the museum. Given the opportunity to host "Barn Again!," 

 the folks in Butler, Tennessee (pop. 400), actually built a 

 new museum because "the Smithsonian wanted to come to 

 town"! 



Another special project of SITES is America's Jazz Her- 

 itage (AJH). Now in its eighth year, AJH, a partnership of 

 the Lila Wallance— Reader's Digest Fund and the Smithson- 

 ian Institution, continues its mission to research, preserve, 

 and present the history of jazz. AJH/SITES traveling jazz ex- 

 hibitions have fulfilled and continue to fulfill institutional 

 visibility across the nation. AJH reached diverse audiences 

 through informarive and entertaining exhibitions focused on 

 one of America's mosr Treasured legacies, its history, its 

 icons, and its priceless collections. In the planning stages is 

 the final AJH exhibition — "Latin Jazz" — which is due to 

 open in fall 2002. 



Through the Smithsonian's growing Affiliations program, 

 AJH is afforded heightened institutional support for creat- 

 ing partnerships and collaborations with jazz museum 

 affiliates such as the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, 

 Missouri, and the emerging National Jazz Museum in 

 Harlem. 



The Jazz Oral History Program, a part of America's Jazz 

 Herirage, has developed an archive of more than 100 oral 

 hisrories. It continues to play an essential role in providing 

 coveted access to first-person accounts from a wide array of 

 America's seminal jazz practitioners, many of whom are 

 now deceased. In the past year, the program has completed 

 the jazz oral histories of Bebo Valdez, Yusef Lateef, Chief 

 Bey, Buck Hill, and Von Freeman. The digitization of 

 these oral hisrories and planned transfer to the National 

 Museum of American History's Archive Center will signifi- 

 cantly increase access to scholars, producers, students, and 

 enthusiasts. 



