The San Diego Air & Space Museum recently received an Institute of Museum and Library Services Museums for America three-year grant for $150,000 to increase online access to its aerospace related collections.

The museum’s project was seleced fro more than 500 applications, according to officials.

As a part of its 2010 Museums for America grant, the San Diego Air & Space Museum provided online access to more than 170,000 objects, the first phase of its Great Explorations project, which included photos and films from its Library & Archives collections.

However, the museum still holds several thousand artifacts that are not on exhibit or available online.

The new grant, initiating the second phase of Great Explorations, will catalog, photograph, and display the additional items so they can be accessed through existing social media sites.

Benefits of Great Explorations extend to many audiences, particularly teachers, researchers (including scholars, students, aviation enthusiasts, authors, and film producers), as well as other museum professionals. Now, they will all be able to use existing online resources to find and access these rare artifacts, without havin to visit the Museum. And, the general public will be able to tag images with additional information, which will be stored with the objects metadata.