smithsonian digitization initiative

There's an announcement on CNN that the Smitshonian plans to put its 137 million object collection online. The new Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough said in an interview that they do not yet 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. They plan to focus on making the collections usable for the K-12 audience.

When I was at the Smithsonian yesterday for David Weinberger's talk, this seemed to be a buzzing topic of discussion among audience members; one Smithsonian employee even mentioned it in a question to Weinberger, expressing a certain level of surprise.