How Scanners Preserve History and Improve Accessibility in Museums
In today’s digital age, scanners are more important and useful now than ever, especially in museum settings.
With thousands of artefacts, paintings, and historical documents to protect, scanners help preserve rare and fragile findings, creating a digital backup in case of theft or damage.
While this isn’t the same as having the physical piece of dinosaur bone to study and treasure, it does help to keep track of each artefact in a museum and share them beyond the confines of display cases.
Today, the scanner shop will dive into how scanners help to preserve history and improve accessibility in museums.
The Digital Shift in Museums
As guardians of history, creating a gateway to endless worlds and times, museums have always focused on protecting their collections and making them easily accessible to visitors. However, as technology has advanced, we’ve discovered new ways to store ancient texts and findings and share them with a wider audience, not just those who visit the museum.
Now, you don’t have to visit a museum in person to learn about historical artefacts or brush up on your knowledge of ancient Egypt. Scanners have made it possible to digitise scrolls, texts, artefacts, and more.
Besides scanners, museums have now started to install touch screens, app guides, and interactive elements, such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Through this, visitors can immerse themselves in the environment with easy-to-digest information and experience realistic replicas of damaged findings.
5 Ways Scanners Can Be Used In Musuems
1. Protecting Fragile Artefacts
One of the most important roles of a museum worker is protecting fragile artefacts, and what better way to ensure their safety than to digitise them?
Most items in museums are centuries old, slowly deteriorating more and more over time. By scanning fragile artefacts with highly specialised museum scanners, you can create digital copies that will never be damaged.
Flatbed scanners are also perfect for scanning old textiles, manuscripts, and photographs. The Plustek OpticPro A320E A3 Flatbed Scanner is ideal for scanning 2D artwork, preserving it online for years to come.
2. Expanding Access Beyond Museum Walls
Up until now, you had to visit a museum to be able to explore all of its findings and get lost in the history of each exhibition.
However, technology has advanced to the point where museums can create online exhibitions, allowing users to explore each room and historic item from the comfort of their homes.
High-resolution scans make it possible to view objects, artwork, sculptures, and more in great detail. Better yet, you can even combine this with virtual reality (VR) technology to create interactive exhibits; users can manipulate digital replicas of artefacts and click certain parts of an image to read different facts about each item.
By creating online exhibits and uploading artefacts, you can make each item’s history accessible to more people, allowing people who can’t visit in person to share in this knowledge. Including elements like this on a museum’s website could even encourage more people to visit in person.
3. Streamlining Research and Education
Research, whether for professional or educational purposes, is already challenging, so why make it harder?
Uploading digital archives of artefacts, historical documents, and other materials online helps streamline research. Through this, people can gather data quicker, speeding up the research process.
Students or professionals can find what they need online in minutes; handy metadata can be used to index collections, offering information about the artefact’s origin, date, material, and context.
People no longer need to visit museums to find what they need for their projects, leaving more time to focus on analysis. With thousands of museums adapting to this method, researchers can now cross-reference items from museums across the world without leaving their desks.
4. Improving Inventory Management
When working in or owning a museum, objects constantly come in and out, and inventories expand every day.
With thousands of historic items to preserve and protect, it’s impossible to keep track of it all without running into some issues. That’s where scanners come in handy.
Traditional inventory involves countless documents, physical records, and databases that can be hard to keep track of, store, and update. Instead, digitising museum collections allows you to create a quick and easily accessible record of each one that doesn’t include flooding your office with countless amounts of paper (it just takes up digital storage instead).
Once uploaded, these records can then be searched, sorted, and retrieved quickly, reducing downtime.
5. Monitor the Condition of Artefacts
When ancient texts and objects are stored, they are bound to deteriorate over time, lose their quality, and require restoration work.
But it can be hard to keep track of every new fault or issue when there’s so much to monitor in one museum. By creating high-resolution scans of each item, you can create a record of its appearance when it first came to the museum.
From this, future scans can be compared to the original, allowing you to detect cracks, fading, and other signs of damage more easily. Museums can identify potential issues before they become serious, making sure each item remains in great condition.
Choosing the Right Scanning Technology
Now, when it comes to storing historical artefacts and fragile documents, you need to use the right scanning technology to prevent damage.
We’ve included a guide below to finding the right scanner for your needs, whether that’s scanning old books or blueprints.
