The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius covered the city of Herculaneum in twenty meters of lava, simultaneously destroying the Herculaneum scrolls through carbonization and preserving the scrolls by protecting them from the elements. Unwrapping the scrolls would damage them, but researchers are anxious to read the texts. Researchers from the University of Kentucky collaborated with the Institut de France and SkyScan to digitally unwrap and preserve the scrolls. To learn more about the EDUCE project, go to http://cs.uky.edu/dri.
They haven’t finished the last mile, but having high resolution scans of the objects is great. I’m not sure why they’re handling these items manually when they could very likely be secured in better external casings and still imaged the same way.