Our textbook by Lesk describes the International Dunhuang Project as spectacular.  I had to go look to have an appreciation of what is being developed. The address of the Web site is http://idp.bl.uk/idp.a4d.

This project is a digital collection of information (over 163,000 images) about the town of Dunhuang, China, and the region surrounding it: Dunhuang is part of the Silk Road, the trade route from China to southern Europe and northern Africa.  Due to the history of the region and past archeological expeditions, artifacts have been removed from the area and reside in several countries.  The purpose of the project is to collect all the material online and make it widely available. From reading about the development of the Web site, it appears there has been a lot of planning.  The selection of the software had to be a big decision to be able to accommodate the variety of objects, languages, and to accommodate the growth and development of the collection over the last 10+ years.   Countries who have portions of the artifacts are collaborating to build this collection.  I think it is phenomenal that these countries (the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan) have united to achieve this goal.  With all the competition, issues, and sometimes arguing and blaming that goes on between governments, it is delightful to see cooperation.  You can go to different countries to see their portion of the collection.  You can see frescos, paintings, and buddhas in the cave in China.  I have been wanting to upgrade my monitor to one of better quality and bigger size.  I think this might be just the excuse to go ahead and do it.  As I look at the large fresco, I have to scroll in both directions to even see all of it.  It seems huge.  This may be as close as I get to China to actually see the ruins.