This seems like good news: Penn museum to share cultural treasures via internet

The University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is dragging itself into the 21st century with an ambitious plan to share its treasures with the world via the internet.

The museum, a national and world leader in its field since its founding in 1887, in September will begin creating a "digital spine" in which all of its approximately 1 million objects will be catalogued on the internet.

The idea, said the museum's new director Richard Hodges, is to open up its dazzling collection of artifacts to scholars, researchers, and the general public around the world who have been unable to access it either because they are not in Philadelphia or because 95 percent of the objects are in storage.