Online display for artefacts

Even with three locations in its empire, the National Museum of the American Indian can display barely 1 per cent of its 800,000 objects.

To help close that gap, the museum has decided to set up a digital showcase.

The move has been in the works for nearly three years, as staff re-examined each item and its scholarship.

The online project, part of the museum's regular website, will begin with 5,500 items and photographs.

The goal is to have all 800,000 objects online but it will take at least four years to achieve that. “Most Americans will never see the Smithsonian, and Native Americans aren't any different,'' said Kevin Gover, the museum's director.

Visit with a mouse-click

So now the historian or descendant of the Kalaallitt can study a harpoon head resembling a polar bear, made around 1880 by a member of the Greenland Inuit.

It was probably collected during Robert E. Peary's Arctic expedition in 1891-92 and since 1929 has been in the archives that preceded the museum.

“We started with objects where we were sure the information was accurate,'' said Ann McMullen, chief curator of the project.
Getting more of the Smithsonian collections to the public through technology is a goal of the new secretary, G. Wayne Clough.

“This is a coincidence,'' Gover said. “He thought it was a good idea.''

The museum's holdings are centered on the collections of George Gustav Heye, an industrialist who built what was then the largest collection of Indian materials in the world.

Researching what viewers want out of a virtual museum, the team saw they were curious how the museum acquired things.