Scanning the Past
Earlier this week I decided to see if I could find any traces of my late grandfather’s office supply company, Red Tiger Products, on the Internet. To my delight, I discovered that the Smithsonian Libraries had twelve of his catalogs from 1951 to 1953 in their Trade Literature collection. I of course had to wield the power of social media to see if I could get an electronic copy of any of these catalogs and immediately sent a message to @silibraries. I was referred to instructional/reference librarian @Trina_SIL who told me that my grandfather’s catalogs had not yet been digitized but offered to see if she could scan a copy of one of his catalogs for me. By the next day, I was happily perusing Red Tiger Products Catalog 132 from 1951. Here’s a clip showing the company’s logo and my grandfather’s signature:
(Click Read More below to see a full spread from the catalog.)
I learned that the Smithsonian Libraries are currently seeking grants to support the digitization of their trade literature holdings. If you’d like to donate to these efforts, you can find more info about how to do that here. (Be sure to choose “Digitizing” from the donation drop-down menu.) For more information about the trade literature collection itself, be sure to check out @Trina_SIL’s blog post here.
Thanks, Smithsonian. You’re a true American treasure.
