Heritage and Legacy

Introduction

Since this is a study of national information policies, the focus on this chapter is on recorded or documentary heritage, including text, sound and still and moving images in any format. Other elements of the moveable heritage, such as museum and other artefacts are an important part of the culture of nations, but are not the main focus here.

UNESCO defines documentary heritage as follows:

Documentary heritage reflects the diversity of languages, peoples and cultures. It is the mirror of the world and its memory[89].

The need to preserve the cultural heritage in order to understand who we are and where we came from and for the benefit of future generations is increasingly recognised. While national records have been kept for many hundreds of years, preservation of other parts of the documentary heritage is more recent. The library world really only started taking preservation seriously in the middle of the twentieth century with the discovery of the parlous state of major information collections due to acidic paper. The catastrophic flood of the National Library in Florence in the 1960s was the catalyst for much preservation related activity. Unfortunately, while librarians, curators and conservators are becoming more aware of the need to care for collections, soldiers are still using the deliberate destruction of the documentary heritage as an instrument of war.

Digitisation is being increasingly used to provide wider access to the documentary heritage. However, the status of digitisation as a preservation method is still uncertain. It has the potential to increase access to the information while reducing damage through use of fragile originals. On the other hand, knowledge of how to preserve digital objects is still at an early stage. Emerging standards in this area are covered later in this report.

This chapter highlights some of the national and international initiatives in improving access to and the preservation of the recorded or documentary heritage. The focus is on government led initiatives; national bodies such as national libraries are only mentioned where their activities are particularly significant.

International activities

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is actively involved in this area. UNESCO has funded various research projects and the development of standards and guidelines for preservation. Many of these have been carried out through the IFLA Core Programme for Preservation and Conservation. Of particular interest are its general guidelines on preservation of all types of material[90] and the UNESCO/FLA directory of digitised collections[91]

UNESCO has also launched the Memory of the World Programme, which is co-ordinated by the UNESCO Information and Informatics Division in Paris. The aim is to alert decision makers and the public to the risks facing the world's documentary heritage and the need to preserve it, while also ensuring the widest possible access to this heritage. Part of the Programme is the Memory of the World Register of collections of world significance. An international advisory committee guides the construction of the Register.[92] As well as being generally supportive, the Programme does provide some financial support for preservation projects.

The Blue Shield is an international committee set up in 1996 to work to protect the world's cultural heritage threatened by wars and natural disasters[93]. The name comes from the symbol specified in the 1954 Hague Convention for marking heritage sites for protection attack during armed conflicts. The committee is recognised in the Second Protocol to the Hague Convention. The members of the committee are the International Council on Archives (ICA), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and IFLA. The aim of Blue Shield is to co-ordinate preparations for the response to emergency situations. Local Blue Shield Committees are being set up in a number of countries.

Australia

Australia's Cultural Network (ACN) is an initiative of the Federal Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. This is a portal Australian culture and recreation. Archives, libraries and museums are one of the categories covered[94]. In addition to access by subject, the portal provides access by customer group, including children, people with disabilities, researchers and tourists.

The ACN provided initial funding for the Digitisation Online Forum project. This is a site for Australian museums, libraries, art galleries and archives workers involved in digitisation projects. The site records information about projects being undertaken by Australian cultural organisations[95].

In co-operation with the Commonwealth Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts' Distributed National Collection program, the National Library of Australia has run a Community Heritage Grants Program. Australian community organisations that collect and provide public access to their documentary heritage collections are eligible to apply for grants. Many of these grants are for preservation surveys, but other projects involve rehousing of material and other preservation work[96].

While not a directly government funded initiative, the National Library of Australia's PANDORA Project has developed policy guidelines and procedures for the preservation of and provision of access to Australian online publications, and set up an archive of selected publications.[97] This is an important initiative and the PANDORA model is being used by other heritage organisations.

Canada

The Department of Canadian Heritage, has an initiative called Canadian Digital Cultural Content Initiative (CDCCI).  The aim of CDCCI is to stimulate the creation and production of Canadian digital cultural content in both English and French so that Canada will have a significant online presence that reflects both cultures[98]. Fifty percent of CDCCI funds are earmarked for French-language content on the Internet. Other priorities are content for youth and collaborative projects.

There are three strands to CDCCI:

·        Canadian Legacies - this element includes the Canadian Memory Fund aimed at digitising collections from Canada's federal cultural institutions; the Partnerships Fund encourages the development of digital cultural content in collaboration with community, institutional and organisational networks across Canada and Virtual Museum of Canada: a pan-Canadian virtual museum that links the collections of over 1,000 Canadian museums.

·        New Media Assistance - aims to support the growth of the Canadian cultural new media sector. It includes a New Media Sector Development Fund; an Electronic Copyright Fund to supports the development of streamlined copyright mechanisms; and an e-commerce Enablement Fund  to facilitate the transition of Canadian cultural industries to e-commerce and provide increased accessibility to Canadian cultural products on the Internet.  Some of these initiatives are considered in other chapters in this report.

·        Gateway to Canadian Cultural Content Online - a Canadian cultural portal. This element also incorporates the development of specialised Web sites related to Canadian culture.

European Union

The European Union has supported the documentary heritage, through various initiatives. Currently, the Information Society Technologies research programme includes Digital heritage and Cultural Content as a key area. The aim is to  expand the contribution of libraries, museums and archives to the culture economy, including economic, scientific and technological developments. Several projects have been funded under this programme[99].

The EC plans to launch an initiative to co-ordinate national digitisation policies and programmes. The rationale is for this is that the

diversity of approaches to digitisation, the risks associated with the use of inappropriate technologies and inadequate standards, the challenges posed by long term preservation and access to digital objects, lack of consistency in approaches to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), and the lack of synergy between cultural and new technology programmes.[100]

Suggested activities are to:

·        establish an ongoing forum for co-ordination

·        support the developing of a European view on policies and programmes

·        develop mechanisms to promote good practice and consistency of practice and skills development

·        work in a collaborative manner to make visible and accessible the digitised cultural and scientific heritage of Europe.

One strand of suggested activity is the submission of national profiles of policies and programmes by Member States. These should be mounted on national Web sites with co-ordinated access through a Commission Web site.

The Culture 2000 programme has also supported access to and preservation of the documentary heritage[101].

Denmark

 The Ministry of Culture has created CultureNet Denmark. There is a CultureNet portal to cultural organisations and CultureNet also has some funds for digitisation of cultural material, including the documentary heritage[102].

France

The French Government has recently passed a law that requires every French Web page to be officially archived[103]. The French National Library (BNF) and the national audio-visual unit (Ina) will automatically search the entire French Web at alternative intervals, including personal Web pages, to identify target pages.

Council of Europe

The Council of Europe launched the European Heritage Watch Network in 1999[104]. The Web site is an awareness tool providing Europeans with information on heritage developments in other countries[105]. The current focus of the site seems to be the built heritage, but there is some content on the documentary heritage.

New Zealand

New Zealand is involved with UNESCO's efforts to monitor, collect, and disseminate policy related information and knowledge.[106] New Zealand is also a member of the Asia-Pacific Regional Centre for the CULTURELINK Network (APRCCN).[107]  

The Department of Internal Affairs is currently reviewing the Local Government Act 1974. A discussion document[108] for this review is available from the Department and submissions for the review closed on 30 August 2001.  One of the shortcomings of the current Act is that it does not clearly express the purpose of local government. In the discussion document it is proposed that the new Act should include the following statement of purpose:

“to enable local decision-making by and on behalf of citizens in their local communities to promote their social, economic, cultural and environmental well-being in the present and for the future”.

This Ministry regards the inclusion of the word 'cultural' as important because it recognises, for the first time, the role that local government actually plays in cultural life, and will give cultural institutions a firm basis on which to have a dialogue with local government. The statement encompasses a wide variety of cultural activities, including libraries.[109]

South Africa

The African Information Society Initiative (AISI) is an action framework to build Africa's information and communication infrastructure. In South Africa, the main focus is on cultural heritage, including making South Africa's museums accessible nationally and internationally. Other objectives include the electronic preservation and documentation of artefacts and manuscripts, and increasing the accessibility of rare manuscripts and artefacts to researchers and the general public, through the development of cultural CD ROM products.[110]

USA

OCLC and the Research Libraries Group (RLG) formed the Digital Archive Attributes Working Group in 2000.[111] The objective of the Working Group is to produce:

A rational set of criteria for an archive that can hold the full range of digital collections and datasets (including both "born digital" and "born-again digital" information) requiring long-term storage and access systems.[112]

The purpose is to develop a digital archive of Web documents, and to track and preserve Web-based documents that exist solely in electronic format. A variety of institutions are collaborating with this work, including the US Government Printing Office (GPO). The GPO will work with the OCLC in areas such as system requirements and evaluation of working prototypes. It will focus on the development of policies and practices for long-term retention in working together with best practices that have been established through other digital archive projects internationally.[113]

A major development in the USA is the appropriation of $100 million by Congress to the Library of Congress to develop its digital infrastructure and digital preservation capability.

Conclusions

We were unable to find any significant government-funded or initiated projects in this field, due to lack of time.  The US initiative is significant in that there is official recognition that the preservation of the digital heritage is going to be costly and requires government support. In the chapter on legal deposit, there is also evidence of governments, for example in the Netherlands taking a similar approach. This is something that the UK government should consider in discussion with the national information institutions.

References