Archive notice: This historical article was originally published in March 2020. Dates, statements and links are preserved from the original.Whether statues of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, tools, Apollo 11, the Space Shuttle, fossils or vases: Smithsonian – an institution consisting of several museums and research centres – recently released almost 2.8 million images and a considerable dataset of 3D models under a CC0 licence.
Smithsonian Open Access
Under the motto “Create, Imagine, Discover”, Smithsonian wants Open Access to address the public so that the published data can not only be explored freely but also used. The available collections include text, audio recordings, research datasets, 2D images and 3D models. Almost 3 million data items can currently be downloaded, shared with others or incorporated into your own projects.
The 3D Collection
In total, the institution contains 155 million individual artefacts, which are to be tackled with the “3D Digitization” project. The 3D collection currently comprises around 2,200 free models including textures, which can be searched by topics and locations, among other things. On the Explore page, you can view the individual assets via a 3D viewer and receive further information about the object. The downloaded data comes in OBJ or glTF format. TO THE 3D COLLECTION.
Licence and Usage Details
According to the official FAQs, you may also use all Smithsonian Open Access assets marked with CC0 for commercial purposes. No attribution, permission or fee has to be paid to Smithsonian. However, if the respective object is not marked with CC0, you must first obtain written permission from the institution for commercial use. You can find more precise licence and usage details here.
Further information: To the Smithonian Open Access website
