Background

Aims of this manual

This manual is designed to raise awareness of the assessment process that results in the inscription of significant documentary heritage on the Australian Memory of the World Register. It aims to explain what the assessors expect from applicants' descriptions of the significance of their documentary heritage item or collection, and to help applicants in their nominations of significant documentary heritage to the Australian Memory of the World Register.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples are advised that the Manual and Registers may include the names and images of Indigenous Australians, some of whom are deceased.

Memory of the World

Documentary heritage reflects the diversity of languages, peoples and cultures. It is the mirror of the world and its memory. But this memory is fragile. Every day, irreplaceable parts of this memory disappear for ever. In 1992 UNESCO launched the Memory of the World Programme to guard against this collective amnesia calling upon the preservation of the valuable archive holdings and library collections all over the world ensuring their wide dissemination. Although its status within UNESCO is as a programme, not a convention (at least to date) the UNESCO Memory of the World programme aims to recognise significant documentary heritage in a similar fashion to the way UNESCO's World Heritage Convention and World Heritage List recognise significant natural and cultural sites.

International Memory of the World Register

The International Memory of the World Register, administered by UNESCO, seeks to identify items of documentary heritage which have worldwide significance. It aims to bring the value and significance of documentary heritage to wider public notice, along with the work performed by libraries, archives and museums in preserving this valuable heritage. Having documentary heritage listed on a UNESCO Memory of the World Register at the international, regional or national level provides powerful moral protection against threats to the survival of certain documents. Listing may also substantiate claims about the value of items or collections, which may be useful for funding, sponsorship, or other marketing purposes.

Australian Memory of the World Committee

The Australian Memory of the World Committee develops and maintains the Australian Register on its website; searches for and lists significant lost and missing documentary heritage; and nominates significant Australian documentary heritage to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Its members include representatives of libraries, archives, museums, Indigenous Australians and the history profession. Nineteen items of documentary heritage have so far been inscribed on the Australian Memory of the World Register. All Register inscriptions can be viewed on the Australian Memory of the World website at www.amw.org.au.

What makes an item significant?

Items in a library, archive or museum must, almost by definition, be significant according to some set of criteria or they would not be there. However, this does not mean that they are eligible to be entered on a UNESCO Memory of the World Register because they do not necessarily possess world significance, which is the primary criterion for inclusion. Significance assessment is far from being an exact science, but to maintain the integrity of the Registers it is essential that criteria be established and rigorous assessment processes be employed in the selection of material. The process of refining the criteria is ongoing and each year, based on advice from a number of sources, the Australian Memory of the World Committee makes improvements to its criteria, nomination form and guidelines. To assist this process a series of workshops were held in 2005 and 2006 with members of the documentary heritage community. In 2007 a further workshop was held on 2 May in Darwin.

Assessment process

The Australian Memory of the World Committee recognises that the significance assessment process for its Register - and indeed for other UNESCO Memory of the World Registers - needs to be clear to those who nominate documentary heritage for inclusion. Nominations of documentary heritage items and collections for the Australian Register are assessed by an expert committee. Each member of the Assessment Sub-Committee is supplied with copies of all nominations for assessment against the criteria (see below). Expert opinion is sought where necessary from those who are familiar with the subject matter of specific nominations. These opinions and assessments are then compared and discussed at a face-to-face meeting of the whole Sub-Committee, which recommends the nominations to be inscribed on the Australian Memory of the World Register. The final decision to inscribe nominated documentary heritage rests with the full Australian Memory of the World Committee.

Joint nominations

Joint nominations of documents with an essential unity of subject, theme, author or style, such as the Landmark Constitutional Documents of the Commonwealth of Australia on the Australian Register, are often more likely to be accepted than single documents or small groups which have parallels in other collections. The statement of significance for the Constitutional Documents makes it clear that these documents together comprise a comprehensive coverage of this significant area of Australia's history. Omission of some of them from the list would weaken the collection's capacity to illustrate its subject.

On the other hand, be careful not to make your nomination too all-encompassing and amorphous. The example of the Landmark Constitutional Documents demonstrates how large collections can be brought under one thematic heading, but still retain strongly definable boundaries in time and space.

Open-ended collections and format changes

The International Advisory Committee of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, meeting in Vienna in 1999, made the following ruling on open-ended collections and format change for audiovisual (and by implication), digital records: "There cannot be 'open-ended' nominations: all proposals must relate to fixed and finite documents or groups of documents. Once added to the Register, the document group cannot be varied or redefined over time. Having accepted this principle, however, the fugitive nature of some materials - such as audio-visual carriers - has to be recognized: sometimes, what survives over time may be the content rather than the decaying original carrier. There may need to be format change within a group of documents after it is included on the Register."

Conclusion

The Australian Memory of the World Committee believes that a rigorous process is necessary to ensure that the most significant documentary heritage finds its way onto the Australian Memory of the World Register. Identifying the problems that have arisen so far in the assessment process, and setting out the above criteria and guidelines in this manual is our way of making the process of assessment as transparent and as 'user-friendly' as possible for those who wish to nominate documentary heritage to the Register. Those who have followed the program since its inception will notice, for example, that the primary criteria have been 'slimmed down' to a certain extent by the omission of 'research significance' as a criterion. By definition, documentary heritage has intrinsic research significance, so this criterion is redundant. We do not claim to have given all the answers associated with assessing the significance of documentary heritage in this manual. There are issues and questions relating to the application of significance assessment to archives which remain unresolved, and will be the field of further debate at all levels of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. Similarly, this manual has not addressed the issue of listing documentary heritage on registers at the level of state significance. This is a topic for discussion with the relevant state heritage authorities, and we trust that progress on this will be made soon. The Community Heritage Grants Program of the National Library of Australia; the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts; the National Archives of Australia; the National Film and Sound Archive and the National Museum of Australia, identifies nationally significant documentary heritage at local and regional levels. The Australian Memory of the World Committee hopes that this manual will make the nomination process easier to follow. We look forward to more nominations and more inscriptions on the Australian Memory of the World Register as a result.