E-Curator: 3D colour scans for remote object identification and assessment

这个项目借鉴了伦敦大学学院在策展和电子科学方面的专业知识。它充分利用了伦敦大学学院在各个学科领域的世界级藏品和最先进的彩色扫描仪，其质量在欧洲是无与伦比的。策展人、保护人员和其他文化遗产专家传统上使用照片和文字相结合的方式描述和分享有关文物的信息；插图目录和注释条件报告为标准记录格式。3D彩色扫描有可能彻底改变这类记录。3D彩色扫描可以记录整个物体的细节。最新的3D彩色扫描仪可以记录一个层次和纹理的表面细节和色彩保真度是以前不可能的。有许多潜在的方法可以使用这种扫描。它们可以帮助识别，例如，在退化的表面上读取迄今为止难以辨认的铭文。它们可以使不同机构的策展人不必亲自去看，就能比较表面上相似的文物。它们可以帮助监测随着时间的推移，无论是在博物馆或画廊内，还是更重要的是，当物品旅行时，例如在巡回展览中，它们都可以帮助监测腐烂和环境破坏。当博物馆被敦促加入更多的国际合作伙伴关系，与不同的文化观点接触，并更自由地借出他们的藏品时，这样的发展可以缓解人员和物品流动的一些实际障碍，加强国际学术研究，促进文物的安全流动。然而，为了使3D彩色扫描具有实际用途，需要建立共享和验证所获得数据的可靠方法。一个对象的高分辨率3D彩色扫描需要数百兆字节的存储空间，并且只能使用在e-Science环境中广泛部署的分布式文件系统来实际共享。使用e-Science安全工具包也将是必要的，以保护对象扫描的完整性和真实性，以及未向公众提供的扫描的机密性。电子策展人计划旨在将电子科学技术应用于博物馆工作和文物分析，探索以安全和可追溯的方式获取和分享关于博物馆文物的大量详细数据集的可能性。本项目选取了六件文物进行研究。它们代表了一系列学科（艺术、考古学、人类学），并在记录表面细节方面提出了一系列问题。他们将使用最先进的Arius3D彩色扫描仪进行扫描，这在英国是独一无二的，以创建详细的物体“指纹”。扫描结果将存储在伦敦大学学院，并与合作网站进行联合。它们将在现场内外由策展人和文物保护人员分几个阶段进行评估。将举行形成性和总结性讲习班，以确定程序细节和测试用户界面。一个由策展人、保护人员、激光扫描、计量和电子科学专家组成的指导小组将指导该项目。两名研究助理，一名计算机科学家，另一名管理员，将受雇于该项目，一名项目学生将调查3D扫描和基于电子科学的博物馆社区数据共享的潜力。

This project draws on UCL's expertise both in curatorship and in e-Science. It takes advantage of the presence at UCL of world class collections across a range of disciplines and of a state of the art colour scanner, the quality of which is unequalled in Europe.Curators, conservators and other cultural heritage specialists traditionally describe and share information about objects using a combination of photographs and text; the illustrated catalogue and the annotated condition report being the standard record formats.3D colour scanning offers the potential to revolutionise such records. 3D colour scans can record the whole object, in the round, in great detail. The latest 3D colour scanners can record a level and texture of surface detail and colour fidelity not previously possible. There are many potential ways in which such scans could be used. They could aid identification, for example enabling the reading of hitherto illegible inscriptions on degraded surfaces. They could enable curators in different institutions to compare closely ostensibly similar artefacts without travelling to see them. They could assist in the monitoring of decay and environmental damage over time, both within a museum or gallery or more critically when objects travel, for instance in touring exhibitions. At a time when museums are being urged to enter into more international partnerships, to engage with different cultural perspectives, and to loan their collections more freely such developments could alleviate some of the practical barriers to the movement of people and objects, enhancing international scholarship and facilitating the safe movement of artefacts.For 3D colour scans to be of practical use, however, robust means of sharing and validating the data obtained need to be established. High resolution 3D colour scans of one object require hundreds of megabytes of storage space, and can only realistically be shared using the distributed file systems being widely deployed in the e-Science environment. Use of e-Science security toolkits will also be necessary to protect the integrity and authenticity of object scans, and the confidentiality of scans that are not being made available to the public. The E-Curator project aims to apply e-Science technologies to museum work and artefact analysis, exploring the potential to capture and share, in a secure and traceable manner, very large, detailed datasets about museum artefacts. Six artefacts have been selected for study in this project. They represent a range of disciplines (art, archaeology, anthropology) and present a range of issues in recording surface details. They will be scanned using a state of the art Arius3D colour scanner, of a type unique in the UK, to create detailed object 'fingerprints'. The scans will be stored at UCL and federated with partner sites. They will be evaluated at several stages by curators and conservators on and off site. Formative and summative workshops will be held in order to establish details of procedure and test user interfaces. A Steering Group consisting of curators, conservators, laser scanning, metrology and e-Science experts will guide the project. Two research assistants, one a computer scientist, the other a conservator, will be employed on the project and a project studentship will investigate the potential of 3D scanning and e-Science based data sharing for the museum community.