The first works were added back in 2003, with just 371 works made available for online viewing. If you can remember back that far, you may recall that the Collection Online looked like this:

Eleven years later and we can now count 6312 items in the Collection Online. A lot of work has gone into this project: each work had to be photographed, its copyright status checked and the works' details verified before making them public.

There are many advantages to having the entire collection online but it is still important to remember they are just images of works of art, not the real thing. One way of thinking about it is to see the collection online as a dictionary: full of words all lined up in alphabetical order and ready to go, but still needing our curators touch to emerge as poetry in their exhibitions.