The Anthropology Outreach Office
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Selig, Ruth
setName: label: See more items in
content: Ruth O. Selig papers
label: See more items in
content: Ruth O. Selig papers / Series 3: Outreach
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NAA.2024-02, Subseries 3.1
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Materials in subseries 1 document work undertaken by the Department of Anthropology's Office of Information and Education Outreach established in 1980, which eventually included materials to answer public inquiries; teacher workshops and teacher training programs; curriculum units; and publications, including AnthroNotes, the National Museum of Natural History Publication for Teachers, and two books of AnthroNotes articles designed for classroom use. Initiatives involved other Smithsonian offices such as the National Zoological Park (NZP), and outside professional societies and universities. Many of these initiatives included P. Ann Kaupp who joined the Outreach Office in 1977 as a volunteer to answer public inquiries but became a contractor in 1979 working on AnthroNotes and the administration of the GWU/SI Anthropology for Teacher's Program. When Selig became the Museum Director's special assistant in 1985, Kaupp became the Outreach Office Head, a position she held until 2012 when she retired, and the office closed. Folders 23-28 also detail Selig's work with Colleen Popson, a collaborator in the department of anthropology and later a staff member in the museum's education office. Popson and Selig wrote several NSF grant proposals to fund Popson's project AnthroQuest, a digital anthropology-based game. Folder 28 includes research materials Selig and Popson used for their 2012 AnthroNotes publication, "Putting Archaeology and Anthropology into Schools," and that article's 2019 Update published in the Journal of Archaeology and Education. The final two folders detail Selig's work as a Research Associate/Collaborator with the Department of Anthropology, from 2010-2025, including this finding aid and the 2025 article, "Teaching with AnthroNotes Cartoons" (with Alison S. Brooks).