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British Museum Will Digitize Entire Collection At a Cost of $12.1 Million In Response To Thefts (artnews.com) 89

Karen K. Ho reports via ARTnews: British Museum has announced plans to digitize its entire collection in order to increase security and public access, as well as ward off calls for the repatriation of items. The project will require 2.4 million records to upload or upgrade and is estimated to take five years to complete. The museum's announcement on October 18 came after the news 2,000 items had been stolen from the institution by a former staff member, identified in news reports as former curator Peter Higgs. About 350 have been recovered so far, and last month the museum launched a public appeal for assistance. [...]

On the same day the British Museum announced its digitization initiative, Jones and board chairman George Osborne gave oral evidence to the UK Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Their comments included an explanation of how the thefts occurred, policy changes made as a result, and how the museum will handle whistleblower complaints going forward. They also gave more details about the British Museum's strategy for digitizing its collection, estimated at a cost of $12.1 million. "We are not asking the taxpayer or the Government for the money; we hope to raise it privately," Osborne said.

The increased digital access to the collection would also be part of the museum's response to requests for items to be returned or repatriated. "Part of our response can be: "They are available to you. Even if you cannot visit the museum, you are able to access them digitally." That is already available -- we have a pretty good website -- but we can use this as a moment to make that a lot better and a lot more accessible," Osborne said.

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British Museum Will Digitize Entire Collection At a Cost of $12.1 Million In Response To Thefts

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  • by redback ( 15527 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @02:30AM (#63941515)

    If digital is good enough access, why don't you keep the digital version and give the real ones back?

    • It's good enough for some things, not good enough for others. Easy as that.
      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        It's good enough for some things, not good enough for others. Easy as that.

        The OP was referring to the fact the British Museum is home of the largest collection of stolen artifacts in the world.

        After all, there is a growing movement to re-home these artifacts back to where they belong. Now, the effort is mostly being done among the first world countries - after all, returning artifacts back to Syria or something makes a whole lot less sense that returning them back to the Indigenous people of the US and Can

    • If digital is good enough access, why don't you keep the digital version and give the real ones back?

      I find it quite arrogant of them to believe the 'digital' version doesn't exist already. As if I couldn't find a picture online anywhere of anything they already own. Including the building. Also:

      "came after the news 2,000 items had been stolen from the institution by a former staff member..."

      Fix your damn insider threat problem. Then maybe museums can remember why they exist, because the rest of the citizens likely have plenty of digital copies to choose from (ask Google), and certainly don't need to be subject(ed) to paying for any digital "conversation" via taxes.

      "We are not asking the taxpayer or the Government for the money; we hope to raise it privately,"

      Oh, you hope to? I'm certain tha

      • Why would I be upset on having my tax spent on this? It sounds like an excellent use of resources.

        • Why would I be upset on having my tax spent on this? It sounds like an excellent use of resources.

          This, from the subject who hasn't even heard the tax rate yet.

          And you wonder why taxation without representation has worked SO well for Greed.

          • Been trying to work out what point you are trying to make, but I can't. Who is being taxed without representation? Is the capitalisation of "Greed" just a mistake? And what tax rate are we talking of?

    • Well, there is an interesting question.

      If you accept that the ownership of the artifact is not yours and give it back, I think, you would not have a right to keep the digital representations of it either.

      If an item is stolen from you, then no worries, you own it even if you don't have it and can keep what ever digital representations you like.

      • you would not have a right to keep the digital representations of it either.

        It's public domain. So no, you'd have all the right.

    • by Fudoka ( 1831404 )
      You can't take chemical sample for analysis/dating etc to prove authenticity from a digital image.
  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @04:14AM (#63941587)

    British Museum Will Digitize Entire Collection

    This should make their museum searches [wikipedia.org] *way* more efficient. :-)

  • After they shut their doors to the public and then (most likely) have to ask for taxpayer money to fund this 'digital' venture, what exactly is a "museum" again?

    Is it a place that HAD one job; to preserve artifacts for the purpose of sharing and education? Or will it become yet another tax haven/loophole/corrupt pit of money for the wealthy to abuse behind closed doors? How long before we start seeing 'digital' representations of works that don't even exist physically, because someone figured out how to m

  • by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @06:11AM (#63941693) Homepage

    While I get wanting to preserve old stuff, we all know that entropy is inexorable, and that time gradually destroys everything. No matter how much care is taken, how controlled the temperature and humidity, what gloves people wear, etc, it's absolutely a given that everything present in any museum will eventually crumble into dust, get caked in hard to remove dirt, or break from accidents, careless manipulation, or things like theft and wars. Just look at what happened at museums in Ukraine.

    At this point in time, with the amount of technology we have, scanning everything should be a no brainer. This gives tons of options. We can recreate objects when they get lost. We can make reproductions to show the same thing in several places at once. We can make a reproduction and let people touch it. We can make a fixed version to show people what the actual thing in its full glory looked like. We can make replacement parts when something breaks. I'd love to have 3D models available to the people.

    And honestly, 12 million sounds cheap. The British Museum is huge. It has 8 million objects. The budget for the museum was £103.4m last year. It sounds like a very manageable amount of money and one that in my opinion is well worth it.

    • The British Museum is huge. It has 8 million objects.

      Is it just me, or does anyone else find it odd that no one ever considers filming an episode of Hoarders in one of these places.

      I mean, seriously. Thats one sweet loophole of a man barn-basement-cave-garage.

  • It will just make it possible to determine WHAT was stolen, not when and by whom.

    Deterrence zero.

  • Digitize their whole collection? Okay. How big is that? 8 million objects? So, digitization means what? Full scientific photography of each object? Or are we talking 3D-scans too? Let's assume just the photography part. Each object needs to be signed out, transferred to the digitization center, set up on the digitization apparatus with controlled lighting, color control cards, rulers, whatever other targets you want, and photographed completely, before being returned to storage. Meanwhile the digitization t
    • by jovius ( 974690 )

      "We are not asking the taxpayer or the Government for the money; we hope to raise it privately," Osborne said.

      It's somewhat sad that a museum has to make this kind of statement. Museums should be a global public effort and they should be funded way more than now. But I get it - history, culture and civilization are not hot topics among people who live by the election cycles, and the public has been conditioned to think that everything is waste except lowering taxes.

      • Well apparently you don't get that people have more important things going on...like surviving day to day. It's easy to talk about "history, culture, and civilization" when one is fat and rich with leisure time by the truckload.

        • by jovius ( 974690 )

          Closing up the museums doesn't help anyone to survive better, but it would create a world without a coherent collective sense of the past and the present.

          I believe you're thinking that museums are there to enjoy art, but exhibitions are only one part of the total work, which includes research and conservation among others. Think about natural history for example. Whatever you might think of art, the museums themselves have an important role in societies and the world. I'd find it sad if they'd have to becom

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