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[00:00.19] The British Museum, in London, recently announced plans to make digital copies of all the objects it keeps.
[00:09.54] The museum said in August that about 2,000 items had been stolen or were missing.
[00:17.04] The museum is one of the busiest in the world.
[00:20.25] It holds objects such as the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Marbles — known as the Elgin Marbles — and ancient stones and jewelry.
[00:33.61] The leader, or chair of the museum, is George Osborne.
[00:38.70] He recently told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of Parliament that he believed a person who worked at the museum was responsible.
[00:49.91] Osborne called it “an inside job by someone…who the museum had put trust in.”
[00:58.73] He said the person took items from the museum little by little.
[01:02.48] The museum’s director at the time was German art historian Hartwig Fischer.
[01:08.64] Fischer left the job in August after serving since 2016.
[01:14.25] He said the blame for the thefts “must ultimately” rest with him.
[01:20.68] He added the museum did not react as it should have when concerns first came up that someone had been stealing.
[01:32.47] “There are lots of lessons to be learned,” Osborne said.
[01:37.02] The museum head said about 350 of the 2,000 items have been found and are in the process of being returned.
[01:48.75] Stolen items included gold rings, earrings and other jewelry from the ancient Greek and Roman times.
[01:57.58] The director of the museum for the time being is Mark Jones.
[02:02.39] He said the museum is confident “that a theft of this kind can never happen again.”
[02:09.61] Jones added that one way to improve the museum’s security is to show more items to the public instead of, as he said, “simply by locking items away.”
[02:24.56] The project to digitize about 8 million items will take five years.
[02:31.25] In September, the museum asked for help in finding the missing items.
[02:37.12] The organization launched a phone number for people to call if they had information.
