The Smithsonian Institution will work to digitize its collections to make science, history and cultural artifacts accessible online ..., the museum complex's new chief said Monday.
"I worry about museums becoming less relevant to society," said Secretary G. Wayne Clough in his first interviews since taking the Smithsonian's helm in July. ...
Smithsonian officials do not know how long it will take or how much it will cost to digitize the full 137 million-object collection and will do it as money becomes available. A team will prioritize which artifacts are digitized first. ...
[Clough] replaced a Smithsonian chief who was criticized for pursuing questionable commercial ventures, including a television deal with Showtime ...
Museum leaders also are increasingly focused on digitizing their online collections, despite its expense, he said.
Comment. Digitization and OA are not necessarily synonymous. It's not completely clear from the article that the digitized collections will be OA; but if they won't, that's news, too. It seems like this announcement is more intention than plan; let's hope that when the Smithsonian fills in the details, that OA is part of the picture.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
