March 



■ International Meeting The Office of the Assistant 

 Secretary for External Affairs hosted the first meeting of 

 the ministers of education of 12 former Soviet republics. 



March 



■ Biodiversity Conference With the Society for Eth- 

 nobiology, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Ex- 

 ternal Affairs developed and held a conference "Can 

 Nuts Save the Rainforest? The Promise of Ethnobiology 

 and Non-Timber Forest Products." 



March 



■ International Visitor The Office of International Rela- 

 tions coordinated a visit to the Smithsonian by "Mama" 

 C. Tamanda Kadzamira, first lady of Malawi. 



March 



■ Exhibition Videos Two short videos produced by the 

 Office of Telecommunications opened in the National 

 Museum of Natural History's experimental exhibition, 

 "The World of Ecosystems." 



March 



■ Awards The Smithsonian Institution Press books 

 The Music of Stephen Foster; Archaeological and Historical 

 Perspective on the Spanish Borderlands East; and The First 

 Golden Age of Rocketry were selected for the American 

 Library Association's CHOICE awards as Outstanding 

 Academic Books of 1992. 



March 



U Visitor Services Public information telephone calls 

 received by the Visitor Information and Associates' 

 Reception Center exceeded 38,000, representing the 

 second busiest month in nearly 10 years. 



March 



■ Publications Smithsonian Institution Libraries pub- 

 lished The Books of the Fairs: Materials about World's 

 Fairs, l8}4—Ipl6, in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries 

 (American Library Association), an illustrated, an- 

 notated bibliography of 1,700 titles in the SIL collec- 

 tions with a scholarly essay by Robert W. Rydell. The 



publication is a result of a preservation project in which 

 some 2,000 deteriorating volumes were microfilmed. 



March 



■ Publication The Office of Elementary and Secondary 

 Education began publication of the Green Bulletin, a 

 monthly newsletter on Smithsonian education to en- 

 hance communication among the Institution's educators 

 and between educators and other Smithsonian staff. 



March 



■ Name Change The Office of Folklife Programs was 

 renamed the Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural 

 Studies to better reflect the office's scope of research and 

 activities and increasing interest in issues of cultural 

 diversity, conservation, and policy. 



March 



■ Acquisition The Native American Museums and Cul- 

 tural Centers Subject File, organized by the Office of 

 Museum Programs, was deposited in the Museum Refer- 

 ence Center. The file contains written and photographic 

 resources on more than 100 museums and cultural 

 centers. 



March 



■ Exhibition "Poster Portraits," an exhibition as- 

 sembled from National Portrait Gallery collections, 

 featured posters promoting Wild West shows, athletic 

 events, political campaigns, and Hollywood films. 

 Included were such popular figures as Thomas Edison, 

 Buffalo Bill Cody, Charlie Chaplin, James Cagney, Rita 

 Hayworth, Thomas E. Dewey, and Harry S. Truman. 



March 



■ Research The 15th annual conference of the Society of 

 Ethnobotany, co-organized by National Museum of 

 Natural History anthropologists, was held at the Smith- 

 sonian. At the meeting, a museum anthropologist and 

 colleagues announced the discovery of what they believe 

 is the wild ancestor of today's summer squashes. Their 

 findings provide convincing new evidence for the impor- 

 tance of Native American plant domestication in pre- 

 historic eastern North America. 



'7 



