Spanish archaeologist and director of a non-profit private research and educational organization dedicated to documenting, monitoring and protecting global cultural and natural heritage Global Digital Heritage (GDH) Victor Menchero has arrived on a preparatory visit to the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Museum of the City of Sarajevo, where he will select exhibits and cultural monuments that will be digitized with his team in June this year.

With this project, BiH is getting engaged in the process of digitizing of cultural heritage, and its ultimate goal is to preserve its beauty and uniqueness for future generations.

"With these cultural institutions we shall agree what artifacts we should work on. We plan to digitize about 300 artifacts in June this year, and we will try to digitize Svrzo's House using drones, as well as the Roman villa in Ilidža and Brus Bezistan," said Menchero in an interview with FENA.

The use of 3D technology and digitization techniques is of great importance for cultural heritage, and Menchero recalled that last year a major fire broke out in the National Museum of Brazil, in which about 20 million artifacts were lost forever.

"Therefore, the techniques of 3D digitization are crucial for preserving the artifacts. Even more so, we can preserve not only that digital form, but we can make the same physical replica of artifact in 3D, in stone, for example," said Menchero.

Significant resources are needed for the digitization project. However, although it is difficult to talk about a specific amount because apart from technical equipment, there are several factors involved and a whole team of people needed, for this year, Menchero believes that the value of the project would be around USD 20,000.

"We are a non-governmental organization and the desire is to share knowledge with students who are interested in learning. We want to enable BiH students to digitize their cultural heritage by themselves. After we have agreed on the priority artifacts that we will digitize, we will be back in June, when we focus on the artifacts of the National Museum and the Sarajevo City Museum during the course of two weeks. The first results can be expected by the end of this year and will publish them on the online GDH platform to make it accessible to the world," concluded professor Victor Menchero in an interview with FENA.