It was tragic to read that the Brazilian National Museum, a place I have visited about three times, had burnt. It was downright heartbreaking to see the videos – as painful as reading of the Islamists’ destruction of Mali’s famed library or witnessing the Taliban reduces Afghanistan’s Buddhas to rubble in the late 1990s. With over two hundred years of priceless and invaluable artifacts and specimen lost, the world has lost one of the great Natural History museums. Now, the question on the minds of experts is whether or not museums and other guardians of history should make an effort to digitize, as much as possible, their contents. But imagine future generation who will only be able to see digital records of history but not the real thing. I say we create fire-proof, water-proof, and earthquake-proof fortresses as a solution.
Brazilian Tragedy – National Museum Burns
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