Download this report as an MP3 sound file.

A day at the museum -- without leaving home.

The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries.

The National Postal Museum isn't one of the biggest components of the Smithsonian 
Institution, but director Allen Kane says it does rank high in one area.

"We do real well on online visitors. We get about 3 million" :03

"The huge majority of those folks will never be able to make it here to Washington to 
visit our museum, so we opened up a series of virtual tours." :09

says Internet manager Marty Emery. Visitors can see many of the exhibits, walking through 
them at their own pace.

"You can zoom in, almost close enough to read everything, but you can certainly get the 
gist of what   each gallery has to offer." :06

It also seems to have an effect on people in the area.

"It piques their curiosity and interest and we think is increasing the foot traffic here 
through our doors." :05 

Specialists can focus on just their areas of interest.

"We have thousands and thousands of pieces from our collection online." :05

So while the National Postal Museum is small, it's big on the Internet.

"We are the number-one collections website in the entire Smithsonian." :04

The home page is postal-museum-dot-S-I-dot-E-D-U.

I'm Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more on stamps and stamps collecting, 
visit virtual-stamp-club-dot-com.

----------------------------------------------------------
Go to Previous Report
Go to Next Report 

Go to Report Index