The Museum of Flight has relaunched its Digital Collections website, updating both the design and functionality while keeping the original web address at digitalcollections.museumofflight.org. The revamped platform aims to make it easier for users to search and explore a wide array of digital materials, including photographs, flight logs, manuals, maps, oral histories, and 3D objects.
The museum’s first Digital Collections site debuted in 2017 as part of a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). This initial version featured thousands of digitized items from World War I collections, highlighting both technical aspects of aviation and personal stories from that era.
Subsequent growth came with support from a Recordings at Risk grant provided by the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC), which enabled digitization and transcription of interviews with American fighter aces discussing their experiences across several major conflicts. The collection expanded over eight years to include topics such as commercial aviation, Pacific Northwest aviation history, aerospace advancements, and women in aeronautics. The museum prioritized unique materials not readily available elsewhere online.
By early 2025, the site had accumulated more than 25,000 digital records totaling nearly 20 terabytes of data. The original platform—Omeka—could no longer efficiently manage or index this volume of content due to its design for smaller collections.
After consulting with data experts about scalable solutions for their growing needs, the museum chose Recollect as its new content management system. Recollect offers robust database capabilities for managing assets along with an improved front-end portal for searching.
Among new features are:
– Improved record displays pairing digital files with corresponding metadata.
– Enhanced viewing options allowing zooming and full-screen study.
– Optical Character Recognition (OCR) enabling full-text searches across digitized books and documents.
– Faster streaming controls for audiovisual material like oral histories.
– Access to select 3D object records—including uniforms and flight equipment—and integration with a separate Object Database at artifacts.museumofflight.org.
– User tools for bookmarking items into custom collections, sharing directly to social media accounts, and contacting staff about specific records.
Future updates will introduce additional browsing methods such as Narratives—a tool designed to create digital exhibits combining biographies, interviews, images, and manuals related to individuals or themes within one interface.
The updated Digital Collections website launched on July 2, 2025. Feedback is encouraged via the contact form on the site or by emailing curator@museumofflight.org.
“Revamping the Digital Collections site has been the highlight of my career so far,” said a project leader involved in the relaunch. “I hope it makes The Museum of Flight community proud.”
This announcement originally appeared in Aloft magazine’s September/October 2025 issue.
