The Buddhist statues, Thangka paintings, ceramics, and silk artifacts at the Tibet Museum are finally getting their own "digital ID", Chinatibetnews.com reported.

The digital archiving work is progressing successfully. As of now, more than ten thousand pieces of artifacts have been entered into the archives, with followup work scheduled. This project will help the museum learn the status of moveable art in Tibet, and help build a scientific system for cultural preservation. 

The Tibet Museum was founded in 1999. As the first modern museum in Tibet Autonomous Region, it has more than 520 thousand pieces of art. For a long time, artifacts were limited to a basic catalog due to technology and other restrictions. The lack of a catalog fitting modern archiving purposes has made museum reference and research work inconvenient. 

Pasang Phentok, associate director of preservation at the museum explained that, in 2013, Tibet launched a research initiative for movable artifacts. It was planned that all such artifacts in the region would be entered in three years. In the same year, the digital archives project began at the museum.