Those hoping that the indoor “street view" of the British Museum—a partnership with Google’s Cultural Institute launched this week—would allow everyone to see inside its most historic space, the Reading Room, will be disappointed. Closed since late 2013, the museum is considering what to do with the great domed space in real life—or IRL. The former library is out of bounds to intrepid internet explorers much like a computer game level that is yet to be unlocked. Instead, web navigators bump up against its locked doors or are sent in circles via the museum’s retail opportunities that wrap around the library where Karl Marx researched the iniquities of capitalism. Maybe BM gamers will have to solve the Elgin Marbles' puzzle, kill the fund-cutting Osborne monster or save a curator-in-distress to unlock the secret reading room level? The partnership between the British Museum and Google does, however, allow people around the world to view more than 4,500 of its treasures and its many open rooms (plus the tops of some dusty looking cabinets) in “never before seen definition thanks to Gigapixel technology [and] a powerful zoom”, according to the press release.
