Following a theft in August, the British Museum has announced plans to digitize its entire collection for better security and accessibility.
The project includes digitising over eight million pieces, costing the museum over $12 million. The museum also uses this announcement to fend off the growing repatriation requests of items, saying that digitization will allow for more access and better attribution, thus not returning the items.
Digitizing For Better Security and Reach
The British Museum has this week announced plans to digitize it’s entire permanent collection of over eight million pieces, as per ARTNews. The announcement comes after a theft of thousands of articles, including over 1,500 historical artefacts at the British Museum, in August.
Thus, digitising all this collection will increase security and reach more people online. The entire process includes documentation and uploading more than 2.4 million records, costing the museum over $12.1 million in funds and five years. So, we can expect to visit the digital library sometime in 2029.
Well, the museum vows to raise the required funds via private investors and not by the British government. It has already digitized half of it’s collection as part of a project started back in 2020, where most famous museums around the world were forced to digitize due to COVID-19 lockdowns. Grammy Museum and many NYC-based institutions are some examples of this case.
Further, the British Museum also uses this announcement to brush off all the repatriation requests for the return of items, saying that the museum has a “pretty good website” that offers digital access “even if you cannot visit”.
Digitization of art collections was earlier suggested by the National Science Foundation for better protection of the actual item and for increased access for researchers. However, it’d take decades for all the museums to do so and an estimated $500 million in budget.
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