Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific

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Women in history – Telling HERstory through Memory of the World

The UNESCO Memory of the World (MoW) programme was established in 1992, aiming to facilitate the preservation of the world’s documentary heritage, assist universal access, and increase awareness worldwide of the existence and significance of the documentary heritage. As of today, the MoW International Register contains 426 documentary heritage inscriptions from all over the world, 109 of which are from Asia and the Pacific region. 

Gender equality is one of UNESCO’s global priorities. It refers to equal rights, responses and opportunities of women and men. The priority calls for the integration of a gender perspective into all programmes and activities. However, only very few inscriptions in the MoW Registers address or promote gender equality in society or history.

The recently launched UNESCO’s Gender Equality Baseline Study of Memory of the World in Asia-Pacific demonstrates that there are only four inscriptions in the MoW Registers that highlight a gender dimension, and illustrates the lack of gender perspectives in the MoW inscribed documents. As one of the recommendations, the study suggests to “identify gender equality as a key theme for potential joint nominations, or as a thematic category across registers”.

The survey:

The survey below aims at identifying existing documentary heritage collections in the Asia-Pacific region that contain gender-related stories or that portray the achievements of women in histories. Special attention will be paid to the records and documentary heritage that tell ‘her-story’ within a view to facilitating the inclusion of gender equality as a key component for future MoW activities.

The results of the survey will be used to develop an online or offline exhibition on ‘Women in histories’ that can be showcased on the occasion of the MOWCAP 2020 General Meeting in Bangkok tentatively scheduled for 24-26 November.

UNESCO wants to have as many countries as possible represented in the exhibition and is interested in collections from the Asia-Pacific region that that tell us women’s achievements in histories, contain gender equality-related facts or events, or records that tell ‘her-story’ whether or not these collections are inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Registers.

Should you have any further question, please contact yu.hu@unesco.org.

Survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MoWWomenInHistory

The 2020 MOWCAP-Asia Culture Center Grants

Important Information: The closing date for applications for a MOWCAP – ACC grant has been extended to 12 April 2020.

The MOWCAP-ACC grants program supports the efforts of the many groups and organisations that collect, preserve and provide access to documentary heritage from the Asia-Pacific region. It aims to encourage collaboration and partnerships to undertake documentary heritage related projects (such as digitisation, exhibitions, publications etc) as well as to help organisations develop skills (eg. workshops, training programs, expert assessments etc).

Grants of up to $US 5,000 are available for eligible organisations from the Asia-Pacific. Grants are required to be fully expended, and the project completed and acquitted by December 2020. The grants are administered through the MOWCAP Office, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Republic of Korea. Further information can be found the Grants Application Guidelines.

The Grants Program is made possible through the generous support of the Asia Culture Center.

Applications for the grants close on 31 March 2020.

For all grant enquiries, please contact us at: grants@mowcap.net

Grants Guidelines 2020Download
Application Form Download
Grants Agreement FormDownload
Progress Report TemplateDownload
Final Report TemplateDownload

2nd Global Policy Forum Postponed

The Memory of the World secretariat have announced that due to the rapidly evolving situation related to coronavirus, the 2nd Global Policy Forum, which was scheduled to take place from 12 to 13 May 2020 at UNESCO Headquarters, is now postponed until further notice.

We will keep you informed of any further developments, notably with regard to the new dates of the event.

2nd MoW Global Policy Forum on Disaster Risk Reduction

The MoW Programme Secretariat is organizing its 2nd MoW Global Policy Forum on Disaster Risk Reduction and Management for Sustainable Preservation of Documentary Heritage on 12-13 May 2020 at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France.

Take a look at this website to find out more about the Forum.  The registration form is available here.

Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) should note the support for travel and upkeep that may be available.

Nominations for Inscription to MOWCAP Register Remain On Hold

MOWCAP members agreed at the 8th General Meeting held from  29 May -1 June  2018 in Gwangju, Republic Korea, that the call for nominations for inscription to the MOWCAP Memory of the World register  would be made when there was certainty that the MOWCAP nomination process was as consistent as possible with the outcome of the international comprehensive review.

The 207th session of the Executive Board took place in  October 2019. The Executive Board  requested a limited-particpant working group to submit a final consolidated report on the comprehensive review to their 210th session. This means that the final outcome of the international review is not yet known and so the call for nominations for inscription to the  MOWCAP register remain on hold until the second half of 2020 at the earliest.

The Memory of the World Secretariat have prepared an advisory  Briefing and Guidance Note  on the status of the Comprehensive Review of the MoW Programme. This includes the Executive Board decision and further information on the significance of that decision. For any further clarification about the information in this Briefing and Guidance Note, or on the global comprehensive review process in general, you may contact Fackson Banda (f.banda@unesco.org), responsible for the coordination of the MoW programme at UNESCO. The MoW Secretariat has also been providing information on the review on the MoW website: https://en.unesco.org/programme/mow/review

MOWCAP has sought further advice from the MoW secretariat on the status of national registers. The advice is that National Committees should make a decision on adding inscriptions to national registers that suits their circumstances. This is particularly important for those National Committees who are part way through a nomination process.  

Opportunity to Input into the Pacific Pathway to Implement the Recommendation

MOWCAP has prepared a draft document on a pathway to implement the UNESCO Recommendation in Pacific countries. We would appreciate receiving any email comments on the document at mowcapinfo@gmail.com.

The pathway is a response to the Pacific Action Plan for Implementing the Recommendation. One of the actions was for MOWCAP to link the PARBICA toolkit to the UNESCO Recommendation so that there is a pathway for Pacific National Archives to influence the implementation of the Recommendation.

Archives New Zealand Preserves Documentary Heritage

The New Zealand National Film Unit’s ‘Weekly Review’ and ‘Pictorial Parade’ film series were inscribed on the New Zealand Memory of the World Register in 2011.

In October another milestone for the collection was celebrated. The Archives New Zealand Film Preservation team completed a 4-year project to preserve the New Zealand National Film Unit film and sound reels, including those inscribed on the New Zealand national register.

The preservation of these films saw the original films copied from acetate film stock to new, polyester film stock. This will increase the life of the films by up to 500 years. To do this the  team preserved 2.36 million feet of picture and sound footage. That’s 1,300 films made up of 3,198 separate picture and sound reels.

The project was made possible when film processing equipment was made available by a New Zealand company called Park Road Post Production. The small team of technicians who worked on the project have extensive training in film grading, printing and processing and many of the them started their careers with the production company that provided the equipment.

The National Film Unit was a New Zealand government department which operated between 1941 and 1989. The unit captured a wide variety of news and general interest stories and contributed to the cultural identity of mid-twentieth century New Zealand. 

The preservation team will now start work on preserving other film held at Archives New Zealand.

Some of the NFU films have previously been digitised and can be viewed on Archives’ YouTube channel.

2nd Inter-regional Conference for the Memory of the World (MoW) held in Korea, 5-8 November 2019

The 2nd Inter-regional Conference for the Memory of the World (MoW): Preserving & Providing Access to Digital Heritage was held from the 5-8 November, 2019, in Gwangju and Daegu, Republic of Korea.  The conference was organised by UNESCO Bangkok with the support of the Asia Culture Center (ACC), the Asia Culture Institute (ACI), the Commemorative Association of the National Debt Redemption Movement, and the Memory of the World Committee for the Asia Pacific (MOWCAP).

The conference brought together over 100 delegates and speakers from 28 countries, including: Australia; Bhutan; Cambodia; Canada; Côte D’ivoire; Chile; China; Egypt; Indonesia; Iran; Jamaica; Japan; Kazakhstan; Kenya; Malaysia; Mexico; Mongolia; Myanmar; Philippines; the Republic of Korea; Samoa; Senegal; Singapore; Switzerland; Vietnam; the United Kingdom; the Unites States of America; and Uzbekistan. A majority of the delegates are members of the MoW Committees from Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa

Within the overall framework of the UNESCO Recommendation Concerning the Preservation of, and Access to, Documentary Heritage Including in Digital Form (2015), the conference aimed to bring together experts and MoW Committees from Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa to discuss strategies and initiatives for the preservation and access to digital heritage, including the latest policy tools and guidelines.

In addition, the meeting aimed to build on the outcomes of the 1st Inter-regional Conference for the MoW held in Panama in October 2018, to further enhance cooperation between the established regional MoW Committees: Memory of the World Committee for Asia/Pacific (MOWCAP), the African Regional Committee for Memory of the World (ARCMOW), and UNESCO Memory of the World Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean (MOWLAC).

The conference program can be accessed here:

ProgramDownload

The conference proceedings can be accessed here:

ProceedingsDownload

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Disaster Preparedness Workshop

Attendees

UNESCO Japanese Funds in Trust (J-FIT) in partnership with PARBICA (Pacific Regional Branch of the International Council of Archives) provided funding for a very well attended workshop on Disaster Preparedness, Response and Recovery. The workshop was held in Adelaide on 25 October 2019 and was part of the “Designing the Archive” conference.

The workshop was attended by 31 archivists and recordkeepers from Australia, Hong Kong, Kiribati, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, The Gambia, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

The workshop started with a presentation from Dianne Macaskill, vice-chairperson of MOWCAP. She explained that the purpose of the J-FIT was to progress the UNESCO Global Framework for sustainable preservation of documentary heritage through disaster risk reduction and management.

The workshop was based on three guidelines from the PARBICA Recordkeeping Toolkit for Good Governance. The guidelines 20-22 covered Developing a Disaster Preparedness Plan, Developing a Disaster Response Plan and Developing a Disaster Recovery Plan. These and other toolkit guidelines are consistent with achieving Memory of the World objectives and with the MOWCAP Pacific Action Plan on the implementation of the UNESCO Recommendation on Documentary Heritage. The action plan was developed at the PARBICA biennial meeting in Suva, Fiji in 2017. One of the actions was to implement the PARBICA Recordkeeping Toolkit modules on disaster preparedness when they became available.

Another MOWCAP Pacific Action Plan activity was to link the PARBICA Toolkit guidelines to the UNESCO Recommendation so that there is a pathway for Pacific National Archives to implement the Recommendation. Dianne Macaskill launched a draft copy of the pathway and informed participants that it would shortly be on the MOWCAP website and that feedback would be appreciated before it is finalised. The Toolkit covers many of the guidelines needed by Pacific National Archives to implement the Recommendation. One of the significant gaps that has been identified is the availability of access tools.

The facilitators for the workshop were Brandon Oswald and Emilie Leumas. Brandon Oswald is the Founder/Executive director of the non-profit organization Island Culture Archival Support. He has worked on records preservation and disaster preparedness projects throughout the Pacific. Emilie Leumas is a certified archivist and records manager and is the Director of Archives and Records for the Archdiocese of New Orleans. She received national and international recognition for her efforts in disaster recover after Hurricane Katrina.

The facilitators started the meeting by asking the participants to describe disasters they had experienced in their organisations. Many of the participants gave examples of needing to deal with flood and water damage to archives and records.

The approach taken by the facilitators was very practical. For example, their presentation covered the steps based on the PARBICA Toolkit Guidelines for writing a Disaster Preparedness Plan. The importance of planning before a disaster was emphasized throughout the workshop, including identifying vital records and forming relationships with people who could assist after a disaster.

The afternoon of the workshop was spent doing practical exercises such as practicing recovery treatment for wet letters, videos, documents, maps etc. The participants gave very positive feedback on this aspect of the training as they appreciated the opportunity to gain experience handling and treating damaged documents in a learning environment.

All the participants including those funded through UNESCO J-FIT had the opportunity to attend a range of other sessions during the conference week. These included PARBICA’s Recordkeeping for Good Governance Toolkit – Identifying vital business records for government departments; How to conduct outreach activities with a limited budget; The diversity of contexts:colonisation, languages and geography as barriers to access; Same software, different design: implementation of AtoM with limited resources; Reconciliation and Decolonization of National Archives and Co-designing a low-tech digital community archive.

The feedback from participants at the workshop was very, very positive, both about the conference and the workshop. It provided a lot of opportunities to think about planning and managing for disaster recovery as well as the opportunity to develop more confidence to recover from a disaster should one occur. The workshop finished with a thank you to UNESCO, J-FIT and MOWCAP for the funding that enabled the training to be delivered.

  • Dried docs
  • Recommendation brochure

Disaster Preparedness Workshop

There is free registration for the PARBICA Disaster Preparedness Workshop to be held on Friday 25 October at the “Designing the Archive” conference in Adelaide, Australia. To enquire about registration contact parbica.treasurer@naa.gov.au.

Preference will be given to PARBICA members and to delegates from SIDS. The workshop is based on the award winning PARBICA toolkit and is funded by the Japanese Funds in Trust (JIT) in partnership with the UNESCO Memory of the World program.

More information is available on the conference website

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