Comment by countrymile
8 hours ago
did anything progress on trying to dig more out of the ground? i know that there was thinking that a lot of scrolls might still be down there
8 hours ago
did anything progress on trying to dig more out of the ground? i know that there was thinking that a lot of scrolls might still be down there
Not yet, as far as I am aware. Digging progress is decided by the Italian government at multiple levels and would be a many year long thing. We have our hands full for the forseeable future with the 30 or so scrolls we've already scanned. We're getting more and more efficient on the scanning and automation fronts, though, and are hoping that we can get our hands on the other 300 or so intact scrolls, but that in and of itself is a multi year long project that will require more money and time. As I've mentioned in a different comment, scanning is _not cheap_ and we pay for it ourselves from our own funding and donations in order to release the data for free with permissive licensing. We hope that we can improve our processes to be able to work with cheaper, lower resolution CT methods, but right now we are focused on extracting as much as possible from the best scan source in the world. Productization of cheaper scanning methods is a secondary to tertiary priority at the moment.
Funding wise I asked a year or so back about crowd funding, but hear nothing back. My means are limited but I'm sure there are a lot of people like me who could band together. The project seems content on the big doners right now?
We will gladly take your money. There's a link on our homepage to give us money. We list a lot of sponsors and appreciate all that we have been given. Most of that was given in 2023 and 2024 and most/all of it had been spent. As far as I am aware we now rely solely on our internal funding from our founding sponsors. We are a separate entity from both U of K and the University of Naples and receive zero dollars from either of them, though their faculty and staff work closely with us in our goal of reading the scrolls.
I couldn't tell you about our future funding efforts or possible crowd funding. That's not in my wheelhouse.