Al Capone’s Arrest Record Card Source: Alcatraz Collection via NPS/Google Cultural Institute.
The U.S. Department of the Interior is partnering with Google to make thousands of historically and culturally significant objects in the National Park Service’s museum collection available online. The Google Cultural Institute uses technologies similar to Google’s Street View – which provides 360-degree views on Google Maps of locations around the world — to photograph and virtually map important artifacts, photos, records and works of art to share important material with global audiences and digitally preserve them for future generations.
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U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell made the announcement at an event marking Black History Month at Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, one of the national parks featured in the Google Cultural Institute collection.
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Visitors to the National Park Service “channel” will be able to view more than 3,800 works of art, artifacts and records, as well as a Centennial Virtual Exhibit, which features a significant museum object from over 350 national park sites. Users can also build their own collections to share or take virtual, panoramic tours of eminent Americans’ homes.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
