1 / 15

Why Cultural Heritage? Because . . . 1

Records, Archives, and Memory Studies, May 2013 , Zadar . Culture and Cultural Heritage (Patrimony) Michael Buckland University of California, Berkeley buckland@ischool.berkeley.edu. Why Cultural Heritage? Because . . . 1

montana-ochoa
Download Presentation

Why Cultural Heritage? Because . . . 1

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Records, Archives, and Memory Studies, May 2013 , Zadar.Culture and Cultural Heritage (Patrimony) Michael Buckland University of California, Berkeley buckland@ischool.berkeley.edu Why Cultural Heritage? Because . . . 1 1. Individuals' self-identity, self-esteem, relationships with others. 2. The development of social groups. 3. Perceptions of self and of others. Relationships among groups. Romeo and Juliet. RAMS, Zadar University

  2. Why Cultural Heritage? Because . . . 2 4. Used to influence individuals and social groups. 5. Individuals and institutions influence cultural heritages by influencing accessibility: presenting, interpreting, creating, preserving, supressing (concealing, destroying), ... (i) Individuals and institutions involved in transmitting knowledge: Teachers, curators, librarians, archivists, historians, researchers,... (ii) Influence direction through policies, laws, and resource allocation (funding, space, staff). Massive vested commercial, political, economic interests. See newspapers. RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  3. Why Cultural Heritage in Library and Information Studies? 6. Academic: More conceptual and practical emphases: (i) More than books in libraries and records in archives: Artefacts in museums, historic sites, data sets, media... (ii) Extends range of “bibliographic” description to more objects. (iii) How meaning and significance are constructed. (iv) Moves information system design from practical operations on well-defined objects in formal contexts (e.g. MIS, retrieval systems) into socially sensitive, politicized areas: War, death, race, sex, patriotism. “The first casualty of war is truth.” (v) Integrative approach to isolated areas: archives, museums, bibliography, cultural policy, anthropology, rhetoric, education,… RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  4. Not “High culture” (opera, fine art,…). Not“highly cultured”. Culture “Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” (Edward B. Tylor, 1871). Raymond Williams. Keywords. 1976. “Culture”. Ethnic group. Any group set apart. (Confusion in USA). Identity. Psychological self-perception. Material culture. Cultural phenomena embodied in physical objects. Style. Objects express / show culture. Archetype; authenticity. Simplified / symbolic form. “Voice”. Self-expression; assent/dissent. Who is exhibited? The other. What makes us different and special. RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  5. Time, the past, history, and cultural heritage. The past has passed. You cannot go there! History is narrative (story): always multiple, and incomplete. History involves extreme simplification. “No documents, no history.” N. D. Fustel de Coulanges. -- and, no history, no identity. History is sensitive. Textbook controversies. Whose history? Whose narrative? White men’s history. Women’s history. Colonial history. History by good people. History by bad people. Time. The example of war memorials. Antiquarianism. Because it is old, not because it is important. Nostalgia, romanticism: Remembering / imagining the good; Forgetting the bad. Historians need accessible resources, especially of neglected people. RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  6. Social Aspects Cultural activities: Performance, arts, language, folklore. Tradition. Something handed on, transferred, or created. 19th century nationalism. Romantic , racist aspects. Gothic revival. Social memory. Shared memory of group, commemorated together. Communication. Construction of meaning. Assimilation. Ethnic minority becomes the same as dominant culture. Loss of dialect. RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  7. Objects Material culture. Cultural phenomena in physical objects. Style. Objects constitute expression. Groups understood through the objects they created. Preservation, conservation, restoration. Extreme importance of copies. Nin, Sarajevo, Timbuktu. Cultural property: Limited rights of ownership. Alienation. Waverly rules (U.K.): Delay export , local purchase. 3Rs: Restitution, Restriction of imports / exports, Rights. RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  8. Values. Policies Cultural Policies and Politics. (Guidance for decisions) Funding, direction, propaganda. Immigration. Language. Textbooks. Politics, populism. Economics: Development and sites. Heritage industry, tourism. Collectors, forgeries, provenance. Foreign cultural policy: British Council, BBC, Goethe Haus; Fulbright; . . . Cultural relativism. Multiculturalism. Minorities. Status of women. Treatment of animals. RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  9. RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  10. Memory institutions. Memory infrastructure. Libraries: Public libraries are not simply information services. Purpose is to develop their community. Museums: Literature on politics of museums. Enola Gay. Signed exhibits. Archives: . . . Much more than ALM (Archives, Libraries, Museums)! - Education: Curriculum, textbooks. - Publishing: Not published remains invisible. The Web. - Archives and historic sites: Preservation, interpretation. - Language policy: Preservation, “purity”. - Immigration. . . . All more of less political, controversial. All involve choices of values. RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  11. Requirements for access 0. Preservation. 1. Discovery: Does it exist? 2. Location: Where is a copy? 3. Permission: May I use it? Legal limits? 4. Too deteriorated and/or obsolete to use? 5. Interoperability: Standardized and intelligible enough to be usable? 6. Description: It is clear what it represents? 7. Trust: Origin, lineage, version, and acceptable error rate? 1 – 7 are different. They require different solutions. 1 – 7 = Bibliography = Documentation of documents and objects. RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  12. Indexing, Metadata, Time, and Culture Languages for naming topics: subject headings, classifications, ontologies, thesauri, etc. = “Marking and Parking.” 1. Marking documents with descriptive names (Metadata); and 2. Parking: Assigning documents to named categories. Four technical aspects: -- Notation: Words (Economics), codes (330). -- Vocabulary control: Fiddles see Violins. Broader term: Stringed instruments. -- Coordination, Syntax. Physics of music. -- Fineness, how detailed. Always a cultural perspective, the view of the indexer and/or users: -- Indians of North America – Civilization = Process of assimilation. -- Sexual Perversion see also Homosexuality. But often multiple different groups of users. RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  13. Indexing, Metadata, Time and Culture Naming and describing is a language activity, hence cultural. 1: Multiple cultures, multiple dialects. Whose dialect(s)? Cancer or Neoplasm? 2: Language, being cultural, is unstable. Unstable denotations: What it names. Unstable connotations: Associated ideas. Changes in social acceptability. Discourses and indexer go forward in time, but assigned names inscribed / fixed at a point in time, so necessarily obsolescent in relation to future discourses. Sanford Berman. Preferences and Antipathies. M. Buckland. Naming in the library. . http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/naminglib.pdf RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  14. About Cultural Heritage 1. Resources from which cultural identity is constructed. 2. Culture is present; so cultural heritage is historical. 3. Attention to specific forms of cultural heritage (artefacts, music, records, . . . ) may be more helpful than the abstract. 4. Cultural inheritance is active not passive. Individual and a group phenomenon. Our knowledge, beliefs, emotions. 5. We are in multiple groups so multiple cultures. Diasporas. 6. Cultural heritage is (partly) a matter of choice. 7. Cultural heritage meets individual and social needs. 8. Helps explain how we think and act. Understand ourselves and others. RAMS, Univ of Zadar

  15. Assignments 1. Find a newspaper that includes international news and examine what is reported in it. Note which of the news items has a cultural or cultural heritage aspect, including differences in ethnic, religious, and political values. Make a list with very brief explanations. What proportion of the newspaper is included? 2. Look at a selection of the examples and comments in Sanford Berman. Prejudices and antipathies: A tract on the LC Subject Heads concerning people. Has the Library of Congress has made the changes Berman wanted? Use http://authorities.loc.gov/ Very briefly report what you find. What do you think about Berman’s examples? Add an example or two of your own. 3. What is changing your cultural heritage? What polices influences those changes? RAMS, Univ of Zadar

More Related