Discovering Gems in the Smithsonian Archives

Earlier this week, I found out that the Smithsonian Libraries have fully digitised over 10,000 books from their archives. If you have read my article on Finding Inspiration and Overcoming Creative Blocks , then I talk about various ways you can find inspiration without having to travel or buy lots of books. So with that in mind, this latest discovery is an absolute treasure trove for inspiration!

Rather than just giving you the link, I thought the best way to show you what an inspirational resource this is, was to go through an pull out some images and pages from my favourite books in their archives. Now with thousands of books, it will take me many years to fully explore all the archives - so these are the ones which have caught my eye so far. It was hard to narrow down my favourite pictures so this is a very image heavy article. I have included links to all the books referenced so you can explore them fully, or if you just want to explore the archives yourself, then you can access them here.