Preserving our past: Digitise and save

Thousands of documents necessary to reach a full understanding of our history were almost lost during the Civil War bombardment of Dublin’s Four Courts.

However, Trinity College conservationists, working over four decades, saved more than 20,000 documents produced by the medieval chancery of Ireland.

Those invaluable papers are now available online in a permanent way — or at least as permanent as anything human can be.

That achievement looks all the more admirable this morning after Brazil’s oldest and most important historical and scientific museum was razed by fire.

Much of its archive of 20m items is believed to have been destroyed.

A fire at Rio de Janeiro’s 200-year-old National Museum began after it closed to the public on Sunday and raged into the night.

There can hardly be a better argument for preserving the documents that shaped our history in a way that makes them immune to the threat of fire.

And, even more importantly, available to anyone with an interest in them.