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Wikipedia Seeks Photos of 20 Million Artifacts Lost in Brazil Museum Fire (cnet.com)
On Sunday haruchai (Slashdot user #17,472) wrote that a 200-year-old museum in Brazil "is burning to the ground and it's likely the entire collection of some 20 million artifacts will be lost." Now CNET reports:
The items in the Museu Nacional in Rio may be gone, but Wikipedia doesn't want them to be forgotten... "Did you take a photo of any of them? Help us preserve the memories of as many as we can and add them to @wikicommons," Wikipedia tweeted Tuesday, with an explanation on how to do so...
"The fire at the National Museum of Brazil has led to the devastating loss of 200 years of memory," Katherine Maher, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said in a statement. "At Wikipedia, our community is hard at work every day curating a living record of our shared heritage," Maher said. "With this effort, we're asking people everywhere to join our global community and help the world recover from this collective tragedy."
Wikipedia's tweet included an image urging people to "Add your photo to the sum of all knowledge..."
"The fire at the National Museum of Brazil has led to the devastating loss of 200 years of memory," Katherine Maher, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said in a statement. "At Wikipedia, our community is hard at work every day curating a living record of our shared heritage," Maher said. "With this effort, we're asking people everywhere to join our global community and help the world recover from this collective tragedy."
Wikipedia's tweet included an image urging people to "Add your photo to the sum of all knowledge..."
Deletionists existed at the time of the library of Alexandra. Put the photos on Archive.org instead.
Most REAL museums don't care, as long as you're not annoying other patrons or using flash photography that can fade or damage artwork.
The "museums" that do have a problem with photography are usually for-profit corporations that think photos will keep people from coming to the museum, and probably not worth your time.
I would love to see museums that haven't been devastated do something of this nature as an insurance policy. Just think if could log into say, 2nd life and virtually tour the Louvre or the various Smithsonian institutions and see their complete works. It would never replace going there but would certainly be an experience, especially for those who would never get there anyways. The preservation and increased exposure of the greatest works of art in the world could be one of the most important uses of the internet. Furthering education and appreciation to a group that might never get such an opportunity otherwise.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Were they destroyed in the fire also?
The negatives? Burned up in the same fire?
The digital copies? Also destroyed?
The backup tapes? Were they all kept onsite?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Ironically, the museum had just secured funding for one from BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank).
Anecdotally and not quite related, when I was in the Army, in the 80s, my unit was quartered near the National Historical Museum of Bulgaria. We were briefed twice an year on our part in a theoretical emergency at the museum, once we took part in a training exercise simulating a fire. The conclusion of the exercise was that too many people had been mobilized and we were getting in each other way, and instead of actually reducing the numbers, the instructions were changed so that more people were relegated to cordoning off the site... and the perimeter was enlarged.
Heh. I just checked, and the Bulgarian museum has been looking into updating its fire detecting installation since April of this year. Detection, not suppression. The fire suppression systems are room specific, there is no general system, probably because they are worried about damaging the artifacts.
Of course, it helps that the Bulgarian museum is a big honking slab of fireproof stone. //// Except that it is not. What I remember is the old location, in the heart of the capital. Since 2000, it has been moved to a different building. The number of visits has nose dived, which is not surprising as the new location is the old presidential palace, which is outside of the beltway, in a location that was originally chosen for being out of the way, and easy to secure. And the entrance fee is more about 6 Euros, more than 1% of the average monthly salary.
I guess the Commies thought history was to be used as propaganda for the People, while the new masters of Bulgaria think that it is a luxury good for tourists. And so turns the wheel of history.
No good deed goes unpunished...
Remember how there were some places in the World Trade Center that kept their "off-site" backups in the other tower?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The "museums" that do have a problem with photography are usually for-profit corporations that think photos will keep people from coming to the museum, and probably not worth your time.
Most museums don't allow photography even without flash, generally on the grounds that camera gear interrupts the flow of people through the exhibits - patrons being shooed away from displays so they won't be in the shot, and so on. This is especially true if you want to take any kind of good photograph, the very kind being requested here. There usually isn't much light, and you need to use a tripod. It is also not possible to get a good shot through a glass case.
And of course, when you exit through the gift shop, they would appreciate it if you bought the postcards of important works. They would be especially thrilled if you bought the coffee table book depicting the collection.