BBC to Put 200,000 British Paintings Online by 2012

The British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) has announced that, in partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation, it will put every one of the 200,000 publicly-owned oil paintings in the United Kingdom on the Internet. The BBC plans to have all the works – 80% of which are not on public display – on the Internet by 2012.

The Corporation also plans to establish a new section of its bbc.co.uk website, called Your Paintings, where users could view and find information on the UK's national collection.

In addition the BBC said it considering giving the public free online access to its broadcast archive for the first time, including its wide-ranging film collection dating back to the 1950s.

[via .boingboing.net]