LONDON The British Museum said on Wednesday it plans to digitise its entire collection, after a theft incident it had reported in August which left hundreds of artefacts missing.

"We have taken steps to improve security and are now confident that a theft of this kind can never happen again," the British Museum's interim director, Mark Jones, said in a statement.

"But we cannot and must not assume that the security of the collection, in a wider sense, can be achieved simply by locking everything away. It is my belief that the single most important response to the thefts is to increase access."

(Reporting by William James, writing by Muvija M)