I sort of agree. The British Museum in particular hosts a trove of Mesopotamian tablets that are uncatalogued, unstudied, in pieces or all three at once, and I know that they have, or had at some point, volunteer teams helping with this. I don't even live in the UK, but I have been collecting Babylonian grammars for a while hoping that at some point my lifestyle will allow me the leisure to learn to decipher these texts (volunteering for the BM would be a dream plan for my retirement). If materials could be digitalised, they would be much easier to access, and potentially AI could be used constructively to put pieces together and possibly transcribe texts, saving researchers time to concentrate their efforts on the actual content.
I sort of disagree. For all these artefacts to be put on-line, they will need to be photographed, and at least a first level of cataloguing carried out. All of which will be taking money and people away from other work.
Perhaps what we need is more money given to the museums and more volunteers working in the archives doing this first level work.
Only then can we consider opening it up to the internet.
I fully agree that this is a prerequisite, and it is a ton of work, but once it is done, if done properly the results are transformational. For a success case, may I point you to the Giza Project, which left me absolutely gobsmacked:
So, how do we generate the political will to fund this, particularly in countries like those in Europe and North America which are all for reducing public engagement and funding of these institutions.
I sort of agree. The British Museum in particular hosts a trove of Mesopotamian tablets that are uncatalogued, unstudied, in pieces or all three at once, and I know that they have, or had at some point, volunteer teams helping with this. I don't even live in the UK, but I have been collecting Babylonian grammars for a while hoping that at some point my lifestyle will allow me the leisure to learn to decipher these texts (volunteering for the BM would be a dream plan for my retirement). If materials could be digitalised, they would be much easier to access, and potentially AI could be used constructively to put pieces together and possibly transcribe texts, saving researchers time to concentrate their efforts on the actual content.
I sort of disagree. For all these artefacts to be put on-line, they will need to be photographed, and at least a first level of cataloguing carried out. All of which will be taking money and people away from other work.
Perhaps what we need is more money given to the museums and more volunteers working in the archives doing this first level work.
Only then can we consider opening it up to the internet.
I fully agree that this is a prerequisite, and it is a ton of work, but once it is done, if done properly the results are transformational. For a success case, may I point you to the Giza Project, which left me absolutely gobsmacked:
Digital Giza | About the Giza Project https://share.google/259KwR05uQFdATs5Q
So, how do we generate the political will to fund this, particularly in countries like those in Europe and North America which are all for reducing public engagement and funding of these institutions.