This collection seeks to provide readers with a practical toolkit for the maintenance of sites, places, and cultural practices. These chapters will be helpful for undergraduate and graduate students looking for a primer on cultural heritage management. Containing many enlightening articles, this edited volume will also be useful for university scholars and public practitioners looking for information on diverse aspects of heritage practices. The book’s authors write from a range of disciplinary and occupational perspectives. They are archivists, information scientists, museum curators, linguists, architects, ethnomusicologists, geologists, professors of law, GIS scientists, cultural anthropologists, and archeologists. One contributor works in education administration, one is a folklorist, but most of the contributors work in schools of library and information sciences. The volume vacillates from the minute to the bureaucratic, as it zooms from endangered textiles in Syria to theoretical and political implications of the World Heritage List. These disparate topics are divided among three parts: (1) Cultural Heritage Management: Establishing Background, (2) Cultural Heritage Management in Traditional Cultures, and (3) Technology’s Role in Cultural Heritage Management Today.
Part I of the volume provides a background on varying components of cultural heritage. Chapter 2 reads like a manual and discusses the powerful yet sometimes tense or awkward relationship between libraries, archives, and museums, (LAM) and indigenous groups. The authors of this chapter conclude that “stewardship” is a lifelong relationship of consultation, and that numerous methods and opinions about collecting and keeping heritage resources can exist. Brian Diettrich argues, in chapter 3, that heritage discourse is a framework that can translate cultural performances, especially those which are ephemeral. He moves away from the UNESCO-centric dialogue and focuses on the interplay of heritage and power, on issues of intellectual property, and on the production of dance as heritage. For folklorists interested in reading about the intersection of heritage discourses and public folklore, Gregory Hansen discusses in chapter 4 how folklore and heritage are not always synonymous terms, though the discourses of the two can inform and enrich each other. Folklore’s emphasis on living traditions and informal means of instruction highlights the process-oriented aspects of heritage beyond solely “safeguarding” national treasures. Chapter 5 asks, what are the legal ramifications of cultural heritage management? The author explains how legal approaches have been used to protect heritage sites during wartime, across international markets, and in the context of Native American archeological sites in the US.
Part II provides a space for case studies and geographically specific topics. Chapter 6 examines looted artifacts in Syria, focusing on Roman textiles. Chapter 7 surveys various governmental and indigenous initiatives to preserve the endangered Chamorro language in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The authors of this chapter point out that the traditional language often erodes alongside other traditional values. They recommend ways to continue the work of heritage initiatives through community engagement and language classes in the school. The next chapter reads like a brochure on the topic of preserving intangible culture in an ethnographic museum. It enumerates types of exhibitions and the effectiveness of each one. The author describes the specific programs an ethnographic museum in Romania has initiated that have allowed it to partner with educational organizations. The final chapter of Part II also uses Romania as a case study, but focuses on gastronomical heritage in the Dobruja region. It offers a helpful guide for those interested in conducting a survey of foodways.
The nine articles in Part III make up half the bulk of the volume, perhaps indicating where the editor’s interest and specialization lie. These chapters bring the institutions, technologies, and processes of management into conversation with each other. Chapter 10 provides an introduction to specific relational databases and metadata standards, much of which would be familiar to those working in museums or libraries. Salvatore, the book’s editor and author of this chapter, describes how tools such as controlled vocabulary and archival management software can be helpful for those working with objects and physical resources that are classified as cultural heritage. Stacy Kowalczyk, in chapter 11, goes into great detail discussing the curation of digital cultural heritage, emphasizing how curators must be agile in the face of rapidly changing technology. Diane Thram, in chapter 12, seeks to answer the question of what should be done with audio recordings of a community’s intangible cultural heritage, by exploring the case of Hugh Tracey’s African field recordings.
Moving beyond repatriation and digital return, the next chapter provides an example of how archives can be disseminated to a community through a process termed “community engaged archiving.” In chapter 14, a sophisticated chapter on the power of the UNESCO World Heritage List, Marta Severo argues that inventories are even more necessary given the “enlargement of the category of heritage.” Through “reverse knowledge engineering,” Severo follows a heritage object from its inscription to its administration, to illustrate the World Heritage List as the most effective tool for safeguarding heritage properties. Jumping to geo-referenced library heritage, chapter 15 provides an overview of tools and methods that can be used with OPAC, the online public access catalog, and with GISs, geographic information systems. In chapter 16, data artists and GIS scientists Respaldiza and Wachowicz report on their work on the creation of a Visual Environment for Cultural Heritage, which “proposes a metadata visualization approach for creating a visual structure for understanding connections and voids between current domain-specific standards in cultural heritage.” Guido Cimadomo, in chapter 17, explores the relationship between tourism development and cultural heritage, making a case for assessing the heritage landscape of a place and focusing on local culture before introducing tourism development initiatives. In the final chapter of the book, chapter 18, Emanuel Valentin posits a research methodology termed “memovoice” that works at intersection of heritage, digitization, and participation, in order to reveal an emic understanding of heritage.
Much of the recent literature on cultural heritage focuses on the governmental and international bodies that preside over heritage policy; in contrast, this volume offers something new by providing a practical guide for how library and information sciences can be used in specific heritage management practices. It attempts a holistic approach but is missing geographic broadness. A future volume should surely include case studies from Asia, Africa (only South Africa is represented in this volume), and South America. Selected chapters would be useful as a primer for undergraduates in a heritage studies class and for those researching specific geographically or thematically situated topics within heritage studies. Individual chapters contain enough historical background and author-specific definitions of key terms like intangible heritage to be assigned as stand-alone chapters in a course on cultural heritage. This edited volume brings together an array of multidisciplinary perspectives that cover a broad swath of research relating to cultural heritage management.
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[Review length: 1340 words • Review posted on October 22, 2020]