Digital Preservation
As we were regrettably reminded recently with Notre Dame, historic structures, or even parts of them, can be here one day and gone the next. Thankfully, we live in a time where digital technology allows us to preserve them through photographs, video, and even 3D scanning. Collecting this type of data on our historical structures is so important, and has been a crucial aid to those working to rebuild the parts of Notre Dame that were lost to fire. 3D scanning is currently being used at Sedlec to capture the current state of the entire ossuary, before cleaning and restructuring, to help restorers reassemble the pieces as close to their original arrangement as possible. Back in 2016, when we first heard about the beginning stages of the restorations at Sedlec, we approached the Roman Catholic Parish of Kutna Hora-Sedlec for permission to use non-invasive photogrammetry 3D scanning to assist in collecting and preserving this data about the ossuary. Photogrammetry is essentially the proce...