CULTURE:
Never Forget What They Should Remember
Julio Godoy
PARIS, Apr 4 (IPS) - We would like future generations to remember so
much, of course. It is a harder job figuring out what we would like them
to remember.
A Memory of the World Register Programme of UNESCO (United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) is looking to do just
that. The register was opened in 1997. Now, six years later, it includes
about 70 sets of documents from around the world.
So what figures in the Top 70, or at least the first 70?
Documents from the Argentinean National Archives, the original German
score of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the South African Bleek
Collection, the collected writings of Venezuelan Simon Bolivar. the
register covers already some of the most important documents in history
and culture.
- The Argentinean documentation was collected and archived in Buenos
Aires, the administrative centre of the Viceroyalty during the Spanish
domination of Latin America. The archive includes also collections from
colonial times from Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and a district in Peru
(Puno). Other documents record the port activities of Buenos Aires and
Montevideo and the relations between the Viceroyalty and other
countries.
- The Ninth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is one of the
world's best-known compositions. Its influence on the history of music
has been decisive and intense. This "Ode to Joy" which sets a poem of
Friedrich von Schiller to music, is now a symbol of peace between
nations and peoples.
- The Bleek Collection comprises the papers of ethnologist Dr W.H.I.
Bleek (1827-1875) and others on San (described earlier as Bushman)
language and folklore. The material provides invaluable insight into the
language, life and stories of the people.
- The writings of Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan independence hero, are a
political, social, and military record still relevant to the affairs of
American and European countries.
The register continues to grow. A group of experts met at the UNESCO
headquarters in Paris last week to examine 40 new nominations from 25
countries.
These include an archive on human rights in Chile, on the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in France in 1789, and the original
recordings of the legendary tango singer from Buenos Aires, Carlos
Gardel.
Croatia, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Saudi Arabia and
Tajikistan were among the countries that sent nominations. Among the new
nominations is 'free software' which has been proposed as a part of the
heritage of mankind.
"The final decision on which of these collections will be admitted in
our programme will be taken by the UNESCO director-general on the
recommendation of a group of experts," says Joie Springer who heads the
project. The next meeting is due in Gdansk in Poland in August.
The first documents were picked at a meeting in Tashkent in
Uzbekistan in September 1997. Other such meetings followed in Vienna,
Austria, in June 1999, and in Cheongju city in the People's Republic of
China in June 2001.
Nominations must come from UNESCO member countries. "The nominations
must concern documentations of world interest, represented in any form
such as film, photography, printed material or manuscripts," says
Springer. They cannot relate to a work in progress.
Abdelaziz Abid, member of UNESCO's general information programme,
says precious documents, if not whole chunks of the world documentary
heritage, disappear every year through so-called natural causes.
Among these "natural causes" Abid lists "acidified paper that
crumbles to dust, leather, parchment, film, and magnetic tape attacked
by light, heat, humidity or dust." Floods, fires, hurricanes, storms,
and earthquakes regularly afflict libraries and archives, Abid says.
The massive floods in Central Europe last year partially destroyed
valuable documentation in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Hungary, and Poland.
"War, in particular the two world wars, caused considerable losses,"
Abid says. "Numerous libraries and archives have been destroyed or badly
damaged in the course of fighting, notably in France, Germany, Italy,
and Poland."
War has also led to destruction of libraries and archives in former
Yugoslavia. Shelling of the university library of Bosnia and Herzegovina
started a fire that destroyed the building and most of its collections.
Many books in the library had been salvaged from collections in
libraries damaged during World War II.
Such destruction continues today in Iraq and in other areas ravaged
by war. "It would take a very long time to compile a list of all the
libraries and archives destroyed or seriously damaged by acts of war,
bombardment, and fire, whether deliberate or accidental," Abid says.
The most endangered collections are not necessarily the oldest.
Substantial numbers of audio discs and tapes are lost each year. The
world of cinema has had to live with the decay of polymers used to
record sounds and images. (END/2003)
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