When I think about the experiences and expertise that the Smithsonian staff have regarding important scientific, cultural, historic and artistic objects as well as the context of those objects, I'm excited to learn that there's a desire at SI, and effort being made, to give me a taste of some of the treaures I can find there.
When I found Smithsonian images in the Flickr Commons, and ran across museums' group pages in Facebook, I came away with the feeling that SI is reaching out to me and my children.
I recently heard about meteorites at the National Museum of Natural History. It was by word of mouth, and the story has left me intrigued, wanting to learn more. It's not that I find meteorites visually stimulating; rather I've been gently confronted with the fact that what's buried inside them affected the course of American space exploration. SI, I'd like a few more gentle confrontations like that, please.
FYI - I get and give a lot of 'word-of-mouth' information at places like Flickr and Facebook. Frankly, more than I do with email or real face-to-face conversations. Thanks for putting some of your images there; it's triggered a real interest to learn more about what I've seen and to take a look at what else you have.
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