n.the tangible and intangible representations of humans and their lives that bring awareness and understanding of their shared identitiesTrevor 1945, 284It will be an account of many Allied and enemy efforts to protect and preserve national and international cultural heritages on the one hand, and of extensive activity, sometimes most secret, to discover, seize, and utilize for military and political purposes the current and non-current records of governmental agencies, private business firms, and individuals.Buck 1947, 10It would appear, therefore, that civilization rests squarely on documents and that its preservation and improvement depends in large part on the preservation, improvement, and effective utilization of man’s cultural heritage of documents.Born 1952, 221Protection of those segments of the cultural heritage of man that have originated or are located within the boundaries of a sovereign state is a responsibility that rests squarely and unequivocally upon the state.Morales 1963, 379The other consideration was the knowledge that government is custodian of the cultural heritage of its people and must preserve and make available the sources of its political, social, and economic history.Clary 1981, 35They take care of an important part of that category of cultural resources known as “objects,” which along with sites, structures, and districts significant in history, archaeology, architecture, or culture, comprise the tangible cultural heritage of our communities, states, and nation—an integral, prevalent, fragile, and very significant part of the human environment. The “objects”—that is, the books, manuscripts, and documents—that archivists and librarians safeguard are especially important, for uniquely among cultural resources they communicate to us in human language. Upon their conservation depends the longevity of our intangible cultural heritage, the language, information, and traditions that are the principal means by which we can appreciate the value and significance of the tangible.Smith 1982, 9If countries have a responsibility to ensure the effective utilization of the rich resources of their knowledge and information for a wide range of uses from effective government and scientific research to recreational reading, they also have a fundamental responsibility to preserve the collective records, published and unpublished, which are an essential element of cultural heritage, the national memory, permitting a knowledge of the roots and continuity of our society and an awareness and understanding of a distinct identity.Spurgeon 1983, 67In light of these conflicts over time, I would suggest that we might profitably examine the respective if sometimes overlapping roles of the art museum and the pictorial archives as repositories of our cultural heritage.Mackenzie 2005, 258And we need to be international because cultural heritage is a universal rather than national asset, because the threats to it are international, and because we need to share experiences and knowledge with colleagues in other countries.Rylance 2006, 104While UNESCO had focussed efforts on cultural heritage since its 1972 Convention for the Protection of the World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage, the 1998 Proclamation expanded its interest to embrace objectless cultural expressions, those manifestations intrinsically tied to their creators, such as traditional performances, ritual celebrations, and storytelling.Moustafa 2016, 321Together, these cases illustrate that preserving cultural heritage in a conflict zone requires a group effort among scholars, librarians, archivists, arts history specialists, the international community, the public, and others, supported by policy and the active participation of political and institutional leaders.Moustafa 2016, 329The collective effort of librarians, politicians, scholars, and ordinary citizens to resist the Third Reich’s broad-scale acquisition and destruction of European cultural heritage is an object lesson for contemporary disaster management, both in its power to remind librarians of the persistence of archival looting and destruction as a tactic of cultural dominance and to provide models for contemporary policies and practices to prevent such losses.Moustafa 2016, 331The destruction of cultural heritage as a result of war in many countries in the Middle East reveals a number of parallels to the conditions during World War II, particularly in regard to the vulnerability of libraries and archival holdings to looting and destruction.Joffrion and Tom 2016, 7The passage of NAGPRA empowered Indigenous nations to take important steps toward reasserting and reaffirming their cultural heritage and patrimony through the legal and rightful transfer of cultural resources from outside institutions to community-based cultural organizations.Joffrion and Tom 2016, 8Although NAGPRA created a context for respectful collaboration across cultural barriers, the legislation does not address the disposition of rights associated with archival materials, leaving staff at cultural institutions scrambling for guidance in the ethical management of Indigenous cultural heritage found in archival records, manuscripts, photographs, and audio and video recordings.Caswell, Harter, and Jules 2017Yet, despite the diversity of organizations represented and issues addressed at the forums thus far, it is clear that community-based archives contain a rich wealth of materials that are crucial for understanding the full breadth of the country’s cultural heritage and must be included in any national conversation about preservation, digitization, and access strategies.IFLA 2017, 5Documentary works in all formats, including digital works, are a key part of our cultural heritage.Moustafa 2018, 80I heard these stories as a librarian who advocates the preservation of archival materials as part of cultural heritage and also as a specialist in area studies.Allison-Bunnell 2022, 557During the twenty-first century, we have seen the advent and growth of numerous and important infrastructures specific to cultural heritage.adj.of or pertaining to cultural heritageNINCH and HATII 2003, 38Collections are a vital component of the intellectual capital of cultural heritage institutions and in most cases, their raison d’être.NINCH and HATII 2003, 50The community needs authoritative, well-governed registries for all types of cultural heritage materials—texts, images, audio collections, etc.—and easy ways to use the registries to determine whether items under consideration have already been digitized.Nickerson 2003, 52Digital exhibits present opportunities for cultural heritage institutions to cooperate and collaborate in new ways. Libraries can work with museums and other cultural heritage institutions to combine and contrast artifacts in a much simpler and efficient manner than could ever be achieved within the bricks-and-mortar museum world of the past.Nickerson 2003, 55This is one of a new generation of online cultural heritage sites endeavoring to make library and museum artifacts more accessible, more compelling and more human.Mackenzie 2005, 257The development of cultural heritage protection has also closely followed development in international humanitarian law, and is now firmly established as part of it.Breaden 2006, 38Archives and cultural heritage organizations planning to exhibit audio on-line must consider the variations in technological infrastructure their users work within.Liew 2014A growing number of CHIs [cultural heritage institutions] including archives, libraries and museums have responded to the challenge of providing authentic and authoritative information within an increasingly participatory online environment.Zastrow 2014, 21While crowdsourcing has been a catchphrase in libraries for almost a decade—the first instance of the term was in Wired in 2006 by writer Jeff Howe—it’s taken much longer for the concept to be embraced in cultural heritage institutions such as archives, special collections, historical societies, and museums.Moustafa 2016, 321In this article, I examine two cases in parallel: the collaborative strategies implemented for the preservation of cultural heritage endangered by the Nazi occupation before and during World War II and similar efforts by contemporary scholars, archaeologists, librarians, the authorities, and nongovernmental organizations to preserve an important cultural heritage site in war-torn Syria.Moustafa 2016, 322A look back at the history of U.S. policy regarding the protection of cultural heritage sites and artifacts suggests that neither assigning responsibility to librarians, archivists, and other professionals, nor collaboration between the academy and the military, are particularly radical ideas.Caswell, Harter, and Jules 2017Ongoing conversations about documenting and providing access to a shared past through a national digital platform should include community archives because they are an effective means of diversifying digital collections in cultural heritage spaces to more accurately represent the diversity of the United States.Allison-Bunnell 2022, 557The promise of sharing technical and associated infrastructure among cultural heritage institutions (libraries, archives, and museums) has a strong history in the United States. With a variety of technical and organizational models, initiatives such as the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC), and a variety of state and regional library and cultural heritage collaborations became essential components in how we manage and provide access to both unique and commodity information resources over the course of the twentieth century.Bedi, Dean, and Williams Boyarin 2023, 28While galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM institutions) have always been important venues for learning, instruction with primary sources in cultural heritage institutions has shifted dramatically in recent decades, from show-and-tell tours of collections to hands-on learning opportunities.
Notes
Cultural heritage can include art, artifacts, books, documents, manuscripts, objects, and records in various formats, as well as sites, structures, districts, traditional performances, ritual celebrations, storytelling, language, information, and traditions.
