The Smithsonian should establish its own vibrant Web community, to save its wrecked soul

Intriguing piece here from the Washington Post about the board of regents of the Smithsonian Institution this week hosting an open meeting -- for the first time -- and taking tough questions, from a live audience as well as from real-time emailers. This in the wake of a very public scandal leading to the resignation in 2007 of the previous head of nation's largest museum complex, after the Post had detailed lavish housing and office expenditures by the then Secretary of the institution Lawrence Small.

The Post reports the questioning was rigorous [watch it on C-SPAN here] and the board was invited to resign, since it hired Small. Now, we wonder: Can such a body/institution effectively mitigate or better manage such hostility? The board did hold its regular meeting in private earlier in the day. Which sounds just bizarre. This institution, whose museums are for the most part free because of the good graces of the American taxpayer, holds business meetings behind closed doors?

What the Smithsonian needs is a vigorous online presence, including plenty of space for its passionate supporters to speak and be heard and connect not just with the organization's clueless leaders, but with each other. See? The sucess of My.Barack.Obama.com taught me at least one thing.

The place has made efforts in this regard in recent months. We have noted the recent establishment of the American History Museum blog. Other Smithsonian online efforts have included establishing presences at Facebook and Flickr, sending out tweets, etc.  This is a great start. A lively online community of its own cannot promise to solve anything, but would be a cheap and valuable way for a wildly inconsistent organization to listen and find ways to avoid the landmines it cannot seem to avoid.

Wildly inconsistent because as all of this controversy continues to smolder, Smithsonian museums are being renovated and updated spectacularly. The 21-month-old is particularly enamored of the recently renovated ocean hall exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. I visit Smithsonian museums regularly, and am a dues-paying associate. I love some of them, and am routinely demoralized by others.  But I root for them. And so do many people across the country.

So, to sum up: We want a Smithsonianapedia, but with plenty of social features, blogs, chat, video, text discussion areas, live events, author interviews, debates, free online courses in American art, American history, and science, as well as lots and lots of those gorgeous butterflies. Per a request from the 21-month-old.

We realize we ask all this from an organization that for 150 years cannot figure out how to fix the roof.

Also: No word on whether the board's public flogging Monday night included any questions aimed at this revelation, regarding Small's eight-year tenure as president of an institution in the news recently:

(In 2006), a federal investigation into Fannie Mae's business practices found that Small was prominent among executives there who encouraged employees to hit profit targets so that managers, including himself, would receive larger annual bonuses. Regulators say Small advocated tactics that violated generally accepted accounting rules and misled investors.

I'll be on the one to start that thread.