

Credit: San Diego Air & Space Museum

By Jonathan Stroud

JournalistsForSpace.com

The San Diego Air and Space Museum has been awarded a $150,000 grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services Museums for America.

Selected from 500 applicants, the San Diego Air and Space Museum was awarded the grant in order to further their Great Explorations project. Beginning the second phase of this project, they aim to increase online access to their extensive aerospace collection.

In 2010, the Air and Space Museum received a similar grant for the first phase of their Great Explorations project. The 2010 grant helped the public gain access to more than 170,000 objects from the Library & Archives, including photos and films from their collections.

According to the San Diego Air and Space Museum, “The new grant, initiating the second phase of Great Explorations, will catalog, photograph, and display the additional items so they can be accessed through existing social media sites.”

The online resources will allow a broad audience of scholars, students, aviation enthusiasts, and other museums to access artifacts without having to visit San Diego. The second phase of the Great Explorations online initiative will allow the public to tag images and add more information, which will also be stored in the artifacts’ metadata.

Why is this cool?

This is cool because the museum has thousands of artifacts that are not currently on exhibit or available online and this grant will allow the public to access them.

Why should I care?

You should care because museums are a way to preserve and tell history, and grants such as these allow for further documentation and understanding of history.

Learn about the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s Library & Archives by Clicking Here.

Keep up with the latest press releases and space-related content at Journalists For Space.

Enjoy this article? Help support the writer by donating below.