Country 35 mm Color Slide File
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Smith, Myron Bement, 1897-1970
setName: label: See more items in
content: Myron Bement Smith Collection
label: See more items in
content: Myron Bement Smith Collection / Series 2: The Islamic Archives
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives
identifier: label: Identifier
content: FSA.A.04, Subseries 2.9
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents note
content: The country slide file is analogous to the country photograph file [Subseries 2.6]. As with the photographs, Myron Bement Smith (MBS) acquired a large collection of 35 mm slides taken by others. Some of these were donated or purchased but most were borrowed and copied by MBS. Many of these copies were made on poor quality film which has deteriorated. Many are poorly focused. As with the photographs, they include not only Islamic monuments and architecture but also other more general subjects. Not all of the slides are captioned but most series have some identifying information. Justice William O. Douglas donated 158 rolls of slides taken on a motor trip from Pakistan to Turkey in the late 1950s. The trip was sponsored by the National Geographic Society. MBS' academic friends in Turkey and Iran loaned him a large number of slides to copy. The Arab world and South Asia are also well represented in the slide collection. MBS assigned each slide set an alphanumeric accession number. The early collections were assigned a plain number with a letter to indicate whether it was a gift (G), copy (C) or purchase (P). He later used the letter K to indicate a color slide followed by G, C, or P and a number. [For more information on the accessions system and information about individual collections see Subseries 2.1.] As with the photographs, many slides are not identified and the information about some is suspect. Although MBS evidently planned his slide archive to be organized by country, many of the slides were never catalogued and organized or else the information was lost. Most of the slides were stored in boxes and trays, sometimes arranged by country or site but more often not. The slides are now organized according to the Islamic Archives accessions number.