Embedded in a piece on 'virtuality and its discontents' by sherry turkle in forbes is the following observation about a visit to the museum with her daughter:

After following the very good mini-workshop of Rachel and Cathy from MacKinley Middle School (USA), I just would like to inform Rachel (what is your email?), that Orsay Museum (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) has just released its new web site: 80 000 works are now online, with about 60% with picture. It can be search by many ways, and you can find momy (but you have to enter "momie", in french, sorry, it will be improve... but we have so much to do with 5 languages) and objects that may illustrate any subjets.

In fact, we have about 50 % of our collection that is a photo collection (1848-1914). You will find very old photos about many different subjects (even with colors).

Our collection catalog :

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/index-of-works/rech-rec-col-simple.html

You can search by clicking on a room of the museum too :

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/tools/plan-salle.html

I hope it will be helpful!

Please, let me know if you meet any problems to go through...

(and please, excuse me for my poor english...)