Submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
British Museum is digitizing its entire collection in response to recent thefts | All of that scanning will cost over $12 million.::The British Museum is digitizing its entire collection of more than eight million pieces, at a total cost of over $12 million. This move was announced after the museum experienced a theft back in August.
The thefts weren’t recent, they started stealing that collection decades ago.
Higgs is suspected to have taken uncategorized items and selling them on the e-commerce website eBay. One item worth $64,000 was offered for online auction for as little as $51 and listings for artifacts from the museum’s collection appeared online as early as 2016, according to a report in the Telegraph.
The stealing I mean was the British Museum’s acquisition of the collection, but this too.
Lol that was my first thought when I read this too. Nonetheless, there’s zero chance of any of the historical artifacts being repatriated to their countries of origin now. It’s a big loss.
So the museum famous for stealing its artifacts is complaining about said stuff being stolen from them?
After they’ve scanned it all will they be returning it to the countries they stole them from?
Of course not. People can’t be trusted to take care of their own historical artifacts. Britain will take better care of them. If they want to see it, they can just pay to fly across the world to see them. It’s surely better this way.
It’s not currently up to the British Museum; it’s up to Parliament. Repatriating artifacts is currently illegal under UK law.
Why is the cost a problem. 12 mill might be a lot of money for like, some guy, but the government is responsible for the artifacts and deal with national budgets in the trillions.
If they dont want to pay for security storage and backups, send the peices back to their countries of origin. Maybe they can find some way of protecting history, cause England sure doesn’t want the responsibility
$12 million - a bargain for digitizing the collection for eternity.
Why the fuck is anyone writing an article about $12M dollars?
Do people not understand what rich people make from passive investments? Literally just repurpose a single rich person’s passive investment and you can pay to digitize a library’s worth of artifacts every year for eternity.
Society is absolutely fucked in the head if anyone is allowed to build a yacht without getting crowbarred in the back of the calf while we’re considering whether or not “we can afford to pay” to preserve priceless historical artifacts.
As a planet, we can afford to house, feed, and clothe everyone on the planet.
We choose not to because that would be “too hard”
Sure, I don’t expect 20 people to go around and do that sort of thing solo, but damn we could all just do 1/6,200,000,000th of a thing.
Thieves all the way down.
Cost of securing your intangibly and financially valuable physical assets for all time and ease of “sharing” with other museums?
Priceless.
A virtual version of the museum in 2029? What would be the point in going? I can look at a picture of a picture on the internet for free.
I get what you mean, like there’s definitely some stuff you can just look at a picture if it on the internet, but I guess for others it’s about the sense of space, connection, grouping, narrative, context etc that’s present with a well put together Museum or Gallery display.
Without all that, you’ve just got a car boot sale of random things - wheras that text, maps, illustrations, audio, video or 3d recreations etc - or simply the placement of things next to one another, or following through the room in a particular order is what really makes that stuff interesting.
It only took a couple hundred years for them to respond to all the theft they did? Better late than never I guess.
What does it cost? How much of their collection?
I just read it 3 times in the feed, first post title, then preview of link, then op comment :D
jet@hackertalks.com 1 year ago
Only 12 million? Sounds like a steal. The British museum has everything. That’s really good
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I mean that’s like 12 million more than they paid for it…
It is the British museum after all
gmtom@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Very witty and original joke
nezbyte@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If anyone wants more detail. The 2021/2022 capital expenditures for the British Museum totaled just over £25M. The digitization will take at least 5 years. So at worst a 10% increase per year in capital expenditures for them.
…gov.uk/…/E02763183_HC_438_British_Museum_ARA_202…
atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
No kidding. It seems reckless that they haven’t done it yet.