PARIS, FRANCE — One of the world’s most massive museums has announced an encompassing digitization of its vast collection.

“The Louvre is dusting off its treasures, even the least-known,” said Jean-Luc Martinez, President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, in a statement on Friday. “For the first time, anyone can access the entire collection of works from a computer or smartphone for free, whether they are on display in the museum, on loan, even long-term, or in storage.”

Some of this is hyperbole. The entire collection is so huge, no one even knows how big it is. The Louvre’s official release estimates about 482,000 works have been digitized in its collections database, representing about three quarters of the entire archive. (The museum’s recently revamped homepage is designed for more casual visitors, especially those on cellphones, with translations in Spanish, English and Chinese.)

“It’s just overwhelming,” says Andrew McClellan, a Tufts University professor and author of Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics and the Origins of the Modern Museum.The strategy of putting nearly everything online is in keeping with the Enlightenment ideals that shaped the museum after the French Revolution, he says: “collecting the world’s knowledge together under one roof, and then making it available for researchers and the general public.”