Smithsonian Open Access

Smithsonian Open Access: Free Digital Platform for Cultural Resourcess

Smithsonian Open Access is an open access digital platform that provides free online access to millions of 2D and 3D digital items from the Smithsonian's collections. It includes images, videos, audio files, 3D models, research data, and more across art, history, culture, and science.

What is Smithsonian Open Access?

Smithsonian Open Access is an open access digital platform launched by the Smithsonian Institution in 2020 to provide free online access to millions of 2D and 3D digital items from the Smithsonian's vast collections. It serves as a central hub to explore and download high-resolution images, videos, audio files, 3D models, research data, and more across art, history, culture, science, and research.

The platform contains over 6 million items and counting from the Smithsonian's 19 museums, 21 libraries, 9 research centers, archives, libraries, and the National Zoo. It brings together digitized artifacts, archival materials, research data, media, and more for the public to easily discover, share, reuse, and remix. The collections span over 155 years of items in the public domain or licensed under Creative Commons.

Key features include robust search and filtering tools to find relevant digital assets, the ability to zoom in on high-resolution images, download options forreuse, APIs for developers, and interactive 3D models that can be viewed and manipulated. The goal is to encourage new discoveries, research, creativity, and knowledge using the Smithsonian's digitized collections freely available to all.

Smithsonian Open Access Features

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