A three-part session on Thursday, July 24 including talks by Miriam Nisbet, Ray Edmondson and Wladyslaw Stepniak focused on UNESCO’s Memory of the World program (MoW) and was moderated by George MacKenzie. The MoW program is an unprecedented effort to identify, document, and preserve, and promote access to the documentary heritage of the entire globe.

Miriam Nisbet, director of the UNESCO Information Society Division, opened presentation outlining, as she put it, some of the “nuts and bolts” of the Memory of the World program. Ms. Nisbet described the over-arcing goals of the program, which seeks to preserve and “raise global awareness of the significance of documentary heritage.” MoW does so through a framework of committees on the national, regional and international levels that assess proposals for the inclusion different items of documentary cultural heritage on Memory of the World registers.

Ray Edmondson then shared his experience as chair of the regional committee for the Asia Pacific region, or MOWCAP. As Mr. Edmondson described, though it is a worldwide effort, the Memory of the World registers are still overwhelmingly European. MOWCAP represents the largest geographical area of all the regional committees, and is making a concerted effort to develop and advocate the program in the Asia Pacific. This effort is a necessary step in making Memory of the World registers representative of the entire world.

Prof. Wladyslaw Stepniak, member of the MoW International Advisory Committee, then offered an interesting and eloquent analysis of the evolution of the Memory of the World program and its relationship with the ICA. At its origin, Prof. Stepniak explained, archivists and the ICA were very much a part of constructing the MoW program, an “urgently needed practical project” in response to the mass destruction of cultural heritage objects in post-cold war Europe. However, the lack of a clear intellectual framework and a perceived disrespect for archival values would come to incite criticism from within the archival community and from the ICA itself. This is, as Prof. Stepniak observed, in the process of changing, and in its present state the project can be considered to have reached maturity. Increased participation from archivists has led the ICA to re-evaluate its position on the program. In addition, the organization of regional committees, the efforts to become truly global, and the uniqueness of the effort all point to the fact that, as Prof. Stepniak suggested, it is time to “go beyond criticism and look at the good of the program.”

For more information on the Memory of the World Programme, including information on submitting projects and nominations for MoW registers, visit www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm

For information on the ICA’s involvement with the program, see
http://www.ica.org/en/2007/07/26/ica-engages-memory-world-programme

Anne Bast