MIRROR OF THE WORLD Gwenda Beed Davey gives an update on a major international cultural initiative In the December 2001 issue of National Library News, Penelope Layland wrote about the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO’s) Memory of the World Register, and about the National Library of Australia’s two items placed on it—Captain Cook’s Endeavour journal, and the Mabo Case manuscripts. Since then, the Library’s PANDORA Australian Web Archive has also been placed on UNESCO’s Australian Memory of the World Register, together with 12 other significant documentary heritage items or collections—registered in August 2004. The National Library has many connections with UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program, which was founded in 1992. Dr Jan Lyall, Chairperson of the Australian Memory of the World Committee, is a former Assistant Director-General (Cultural and Educational Services) for the Library, and Margy Burn, the current Assistant Director-General (Australian Collections and Reader Services) is also a member of the Australian committee. But what exactly is the Memory of the World Program? UNESCO defines it as follows:
Establishment of the Memory of the World Program has an interesting history. In 1972, UNESCO established an international treaty, the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage, which it encouraged countries to sign. The Convention referred to ‘cultural and natural heritage’, and its emphasis was on sites such as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef or the Baroque cathedrals of Latin America. At much the same time, the Australian Government appointed a committee of inquiry to review heritage issues in Australia, and the committee’s findings, the Report of the Inquiry into the National Estate, was produced in 1974. The Australian Report included a definition of heritage as ‘the things you keep’, a definition which like the 1972 UNESCO Convention, emphasised material culture—namely buildings, sites and objects. For some time, ‘world heritage’ meant tangible objects. Yet international disquiet was growing about the need to also protect intangible cultural heritage—such as peoples’ beliefs, values and customs. In 1976, its Bicentennial Year, the United States Congress passed the American Folklife Preservation Act, which aimed to protect and preserve its folk heritage. Some of the intangible elements of folklife listed in the American Act included custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance drama, ritual and pageantry. Ten years later, the Australian Government Committee of Inquiry into Folklife in Australia published its own findings as Folklife in Australia: Our Living Heritage (1987). The Committee’s list of major categories included material culture (‘making things’), but also oral folklore, music and dance, customs, pastimes and beliefs, occupational folklore and children’s folklore. Most categories referred to ‘intangibles’. One of UNESCO’s responses to the need for protection for intangible cultural heritage involved the establishment of a Committee of Government Experts on the Safeguarding of Folklore, which met in Paris in February 1982, and thereafter for a number of years. It eventually obtained the agreement of the General Conference of UNESCO in October/November 1989 to a document which became known as the 1989 Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore. The chairperson of the UNESCO committee which successfully produced the final recommendation in 1989 was Dr Keith McKenry, National Library Harold White Fellow in 2004. McKenry was at the time a senior commonwealth public servant in the then Department of Arts, Heritage and the Environment.
Much of the delay in drafting the final recommendation revolved around matters of terminology, and about whether the instrument would be legally binding. A key subject of dissent concerned the issue of whether folklore was’ knowledge’ (and therefore free of payment) or ‘property’ (where access would involve payment). A number of French-speaking countries greatly disliked the term ‘folklore’, which to them seemed pejorative or trivial, despite the prestige in which terms such as folklore and folklife are held in countries like Finland, Korea and the United States of America. This regrettable linguistic contretemps eventually resulted in UNESCO’s general substitution of the more comprehensive term ‘intangible cultural heritage’ for folklore or folklife. UNESCO’s attention to intangible cultural heritage took a number of forms subsequent to the 1989 recommendation. In 1992 UNESCO instituted its Memory of the World Program, which has given world significance to items as varied as Barbados’s Documentary Heritage of Enslaved Peoples of the Caribbean, China’s Traditional Music Sound Archives, and Egypt’s Memory of the Suez Canal. From 1995 to 1999, UNESCO carried out an evaluation of the implementation of the 1989 Recommendation on Safeguarding Traditional Culture and Folklore. For this purpose, seminars were held in eight different regional areas across the world, and the Australian National Commission for UNESCO was represented at a meeting in Noumea in February 1999. Subsequently, in June 1999, an international conference was held jointly by UNESCO and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC (USA), which produced an Action Plan for the Safeguarding and Revitalisation of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
In 2001, as noted, two highly significant examples of Australia’s documentary heritage were placed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register—Captain Cook’s Endeavour journal, and the Mabo Papers. In the same year, UNESCO made its first Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, which now include items as varied as material relating to the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, the Wayang Puppet Theatre (Indonesia) and the Woodcrafting Knowledge of the Zafimaniry of Madagascar. In 2003 UNESCO launched the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Now acknowledged as providing major international guidelines on intangible heritage, the 2003 Convention encompasses oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, knowledge and traditional craftsmanship. The August 2004 entries on UNESCO’s Australian Memory of the World Register include among others the Cinesound Movietone Australian Newsreel Collection 1929–1975, the Displaced Persons Migrant Selection Documents 1947–1953, the Ballarat Reform League Charter, the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang, and the National Library’s PANDORA, Australia’s Web Archive. PANDORA, as the acronym indicates, aims at Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia. In international terms, it is a unique archive of websites and online publications produced in Australia, collated with the permission of the owners of the publications, and made available to users to search PANDORA by such topics as Business and Economy, Indigenous Peoples, and Science and Technology, as well as by individual titles. A further entry in the 2004 UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register is of special interest to the National Library: namely, the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection, held at Museum Victoria. This collection is possibly the world’s largest archive of children’s playground games and rhymes, principally in the form of written text, with some artefacts and audio and video recordings. The National Library has substantial numbers of sound recordings of children’s playground lore—listed in a guide entitled Fish Trout, You’re Out, soon to be released by the Library online. A major entry in this guide is for sound recordings from the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection, preserved and catalogued by the National Library. UNESCO’s concerns for intangible cultural heritage have progressed considerably since the 1972 World Heritage Convention, with its emphasis on material and natural heritage. In addition to its 2003 Convention, which laid down international guidelines for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program has recognised that documentary heritage is ‘the mirror of the world and its memory’. Many of Australia’s most significant memories, including some held in the National Library of Australia, are now reflected in that mirror. Dr GWENDA BEED DAVEY AM was a National Library Harold White Fellow in 1988. She has written a number of articles previously for National Library of Australia News, and is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific, at Deakin University at Burwood, Victoria |
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