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11The constituent collections will be accessible in digital form to students, scholars andthe interested, or where conservation permits, in reality. Images will be available on the E-Museum. There will be an annual programme of exhibitions, and an education service, as wellas facilities for scholars and students. It is hoped that the centre will be open three or fourdays a week in term time (to be finalised), with other times by arrangement.The first exhibition will comprise a selection of stunning Qing embroideries andtapestries. One on Pakistani textiles will follow this exhibition. Others in the pipeline includeBritish fashion and the Mediterranean embroideries. The centre will open on 6 May.Professor Michael Hann, Director, ULITAP.W.G. Lawson, Curator, School of Textiles and DesignTHE DIGITISATION PROJECT OF STEIN TEXTILES IN THE BRITISH MUSEUMThe Stein Collection in the British Museum comprises about 300 paintings on silk,hemp and paper, 200 pieces of textiles and 1,600 three-dimensional artefacts. This materialwas recovered from present-day Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China by Hungarian-bornBritish archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1942) during three expeditions undertaken in1900-1901, 1906-1908 and 1913-1916. The material ranges in date from the Neolithic period(2nd millennium BC) to the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907), illustrating the lifestyle, burial andreligious practices of several different cultures which developed across Chinese Central Asiaover 1,500 years.Most of these artefacts are very fragile and susceptible to light, and this is the reasonwhy they cannot be exhibited on a permanent basis in the museum. However, in response to theincreasing demand for accessibility from scholars and students, a digitisation project has beenundertaken, thanks to the sponsorship of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation based in NewYork. The aim of the project is to take digital pictures of the objects and link them to dataextracted from the Museum database, creating a virtual catalogue. This catalogue will beavailable to the public first from a computer in the Student's Room of the Department ofAsia, and eventually on the British Museum/Mellon website. Phase one of the digitisationproject focussed on the paintings, and was completed in Autumn 2002, while phase two willconcentrate on textiles and three-dimensional artefacts. The project started in April 2003 andwill run to June 2004. It is managed by Carol Michaelson, Assistant Keeper in theDepartment of Asia, and coordinated by Cecilia Braghin.The textiles selected for phase two will include all those published in Volume 3 of TheArt of Central Asia series compiled by Roderick Whitfield in 1985 and published byKodansha, as well as in the catalogue which accompanied the homonymous exhibition Cavesof the Thousand Buddhas, edited by Whitfield and Fatter in 1990 and published by the BritishMuseum Press, and additional pieces that have never been published before. The entry for