WASHINGTON

The Smithsonian Institution’s museum dedicated to Black history and culture launches this week with an interactive Web site long before its building opens for visitors on the National Mall.

Social-networking technology donated by IBM Corp. will allow visitors to help produce content for future exhibits at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. Almost anything is fair game: long essays, short vignettes of memories or recorded oral histories. The museum plans to add video capabilities in the future.

The museum planned to announce the site’s debut Wednesday.

“The culture of the African-American experience ... is too important to wait five or 10 years until the building is open,” says Lonnie Bunch, the museum’s founding director. “I wanted people to know that from the day I was hired, this museum exists.”

Museum staff will monitor the site for historical accuracy, and technical filters will block racist or inappropriate comments, says Bunch, adding that the site is really a “virtual museum” and a new source of research for curators and scholars.

Museum officials began thinking about launching the Web site during an explosion in the popularity of social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. That’s when Bunch and IBM Chairman Samuel Palmisano, who sits on the museum’s advisory board, got to talking. IBM eventually agreed to donate $1 million worth of hardware, software and services to build the site.

“The museum thought, ‘Let’s harness this. Let’s build a social network that brings together people interested in the African-American experience ... all those people that are your visitors but who have great stories to tell,” says John Tolva, IBM’s senior manager for cultural programs.

One of the first contributions came from Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund and a member of the museum’s board. Lomax recalls when, at age 13, his mother moved him and his five brothers and sisters from Los Angeles to Tuskegee, Ala., to cover the civil rights movement for Nation magazine. He submitted a story his mother wrote for the magazine called “Journey to the Beginning,” which recounted his family’s encounter with the South in 1961.