Google and British Museum said in a statement that the collections would be “the largest space to be captured on indoor Street View”.
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Now the dream has become a reality, according to its director.
The Google home page has added a link to the new experience to mark the launch.
Neil MacGregor, the outgoing director of the British Museum, said it would not replace going to the museum but offer a different experience and “allow you to see the collection more closely than if you visit on a busy Saturday”.
Brittin explained the project is designed not only to make it possible for people to enjoy the museum’s exhibits from millions of miles away, but also allow it to showcase items that have to be kept under wraps from the public.
“And this isn’t just about putting the collection online”.
“This is a question a lot of people say: ‘If you put this all online will people stop visiting museums?’ This is totally untrue”. But they mostly have an academic audience and it does not have the reach of the new partnership, said Chris Michaels, the museum’s digital head. The project means that fragile objects can be viewed all year round, such as the 6th-century Chinese Admonitions Scroll, which can only be seen for a few months a year in its physical form.
The British Museum previously worked with the institute on a project related to its Sutton Hoo collection. “It is a huge organisational process for a place as big as this”, said Michaels.
The scale of the British Museum project is striking.
There will also be a “Museum of the World” accessible through the site – a way of viewing the artifacts mapped to a timeline to allow users to make connections between cultures around the world.
Google and the British Museum have announced a partnership to expand the current Google Cultural Institute’s offerings of digital musceum exhibits to anyone around the world.
“The Google Cultural Institute is a non-profit within Google and a non-commercial endeavour, so we only work with non-commercial partners”.
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“We want to keep experimenting with museums to show the content they have in interesting ways”.
