Protecting, preserving and promoting access to the world’s documentary heritage

Key challenges

Documentary heritage – from preserving documents in libraries, archives and museums to the software that is driving the digital transformation – is an essential part of humanity’s collective memory. It is a key resource that helps us learn from the past; whether it be contributing to building more equitable, inclusive and sustainable societies or helping us tackle current crises with information on past responses.

Many original and unaltered items and collections are today endangered because of looting and dispersal, illegal trading, deliberate destruction, inadequate storage and a lack of funding.

Moreover, these risks are heightened during times of crisis such as conflicts and natural disasters.

New strategies are thus needed to support and update documentary heritage preservation tools and techniques, and digital preservation should be included as a component in disaster risk reduction strategies. This should also include strengthening the capacities of memory and research institutions to improve their resilience in the face of emergency and crisis situations. 

• Highlighting the role of memory institutions in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and how documentary heritage can be harnessed to learn from past crises and emergency response.

• Bridging policy gaps in digital preservation by organizing, in October 2020, a dedicated online Policy Dialogue on Documentary Heritage at Risk, involving more than 830 participants from across the world from the public and private sector, memory institutions and academia.

• Mobilizing stakeholders from across the world to protect and promote preservation and access to documentary heritage, facilitating knowledge sharing and international cooperation. An example of this was the second Inter-regional Conference for the Memory of the World in November 2019, which gathered over 100 delegates and speakers from 28 countries to discuss best practice strategies and state-of-the-art policies.

• Fostering global discussions on disaster risk reduction as a strategic framework for the sustainable preservation of documentary heritage. The first Global Policy Forum on Preservation of Documentary Heritage for Disaster Risk Reduction and Management was organized by UNESCO in 2018.

• Organizing in 2020 an international consultation in Mali on the safeguarding, accessibility and promotion of ancient manuscripts in the Sahel, which led to the production of national policy recommendations on the issue.

• Developing, with the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation, an online software heritage archive enabling full access to the source code of more than 134 million software projects.

• Producing a Gender Equality Baseline Study of the Memory of the World in the Asia-Pacific region, identifying gender gaps in documentary heritage processes.

• Launching the project “Women in History – Telling HERstory through Memory of the World” to identify collections in the region that have gender-related stories or portray significant achievements by women throughout history.