USNM Curators Annual Reports: Department of Birds, Annual and Monthly Reports 1889 - 1890

In the opening pages of these reports, head curator Robert Ridgway notes: "the number of specimens added to the collections in 1889-1890 is considerably less than [last year] but this is rather a cause for congratulations." As leader of a department in a National Museum that was still very young, what other factors contributed to Ridgway's perspective that a slow down in collection acquisitions was not a bad thing? Perhaps it was the large volume of unprocessed specimens received from the Galapagos Islands expeditions aboard the steamer Albatross or other expeditions. Please join us in transcribing these reports to see the work of the Smithsonian and its scientists from Ridgway's perspective. Your transcriptions help to make detailed searching possible of these documents possible for future students and researchers.