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The Australian Library JournalUNESCO's Memory of the World Programme and Australia's lost and missing documentary heritageRoss Harvey [Author's note: the international program is the Memory of the World Programme; the Australian program is the Australian Memory of the World Program. I have used these spellings throughout.] Manuscript received March 2003 IntroductionOne aspect of the Memory of the World Programme is the attempt to list lost and missing documentary heritage. The Australian Memory of the World Program is the first to start work on this task which poses many challenges. One is the paradox of attempting to identify and determine the significance of material that cannot be examined - it is, by definition, lost or missing. Other challenges relate to definitions: for instance, of significance, and of documentary heritage. This article describes progress on the Australian Memory of the World Program's listing of lost and missing documentary heritage, which has focused on working out a methodology to address the paradox. The field of preservation is fast-changing, as it moves from an object-based perspective to one which attempts to accommodate the challenges and opportunities presented by digital information. We are grappling with the strategies and technologies that will aid us in preserving digital information. There is one area where the challenges are especially great and require more attention than we have given in the pre-digital preservation environment - selection: how we decide what to commit our limited preservation resources to. We do not have the ability to preserve all that we would like, and the reality for libraries and archives is that we never will. Described here is an international project that has its basis in the issue of selection - the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. A paradox immediately arises: how can we determine the significance of 'lost or missing' documentary heritage material? Determining significance is hard enough. But if the material is lost or missing, we cannot examine it. Moreover, why should we want to pay any detailed attention to lost or missing documentary heritage? It is lost, so why bother putting time and effort into trying to list it. But this is what UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme is attempting to do. UNESCO's Memory of the World ProgrammeThe principal statement about UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme is found on the UNESCO website: 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. UNESCO has launched the Memory of the World Programme to guard against collective amnesia calling upon the preservation of the valuable archive holdings and library collections all over the world ensuring their wide dissemination. (Memory of the World 2003) The term 'collective amnesia' refers to the vulnerability of documentary cultural heritage through losses caused by natural decay, damage through war, natural disasters, deliberate destruction and a host of other causes. The nature and magnitude of such losses are readily demonstrated. UNESCO commissioned a report, published in 1996, as part of the Memory of the World Programme (van der Hoeven and van Albada 1996) which contains two extensive listings of lost and missing documentary heritage. The first listing, developed from a survey of the literature, lists libraries and collections damaged or destroyed in the twentieth century; and the second, based on a survey of archives, is of lost or damaged archives from 1900 to 1994. These lists indicate that natural disasters and wars are probably the most frequent causes of damage and destruction. The report is not limited to paper-based documentary heritage, noting that 'the most endangered carriers are not necessarily the oldest' and bringing to our attention the examples of acetate discs and polymer film (Van der Hoeven and van Albada 1996, p3). The best-known disasters or accidents are not necessarily the most destructive. While we are probably aware of the destruction of the library at Alexandria, we may be less familiar with the 1988 fire that damaged or destroyed about 3.6 million books in the former Soviet Union's Academy of Sciences Library in Leningrad, or the 700 000 volumes destroyed in 1923 by an earthquake and resulting fires at the Imperial University Library in Tokyo. Unique material of significance was lost in both of these disasters. And there are many, many more instances of major loss of documentary heritage, often unique. These examples of the destruction of library collections are paralleled in the archives survey carried out in 1996. To illustrate this, here are the first two country listings from what is an extensive, although by no means comprehensive, list of archives collections containing lost or missing material: Albanie Note the number of archives that are indicated as 'destr' - that is, completely destroyed. Recent examples are also plentiful such as the attack on the National and University Library of Bosnia and Hercegovina ('a deliberate attempt to destroy a nation's cultural heritage' (Peic 1998)), the library of the National University of East Timor (Union Aid Abroad 2002), floods in the Czech Republic and Germany in August 2002, and very recently the conflicts in Palestine and Afghanistan come to mind, to which we now need to add damage to libraries such as that at the Mt Stromlo Observatory in the January-February 2003 bushfires in Australia, To date, the primary activity of the Memory of the World Programme has been to compile registers of material which meets its criteria of significance. The World Register, found on the Memory of the World website (Memory of the World 2003), lists only those documents that are clearly of world significance. The Register Sub-committee of the International Advisory Committee receives nominations from National Committees, whose role includes identifying and initiating nominations for the international register, publicising the Memory of the World Programme, and setting up national Memory of the World registers. A note about significanceSignificance is a key concept in the Programme. Determining significance is an essential part of many preservation programs and strategies, because the resources we have available to fund preservation are limited and must be applied to the material agreed to be of significance. It is not an easy task. Some of the questions which arise are:
An Australian example illustrates illustrate some of these points. The introduction to the recently published second volume of the History of the Book in Australia (Lyon and Arnold 2002) begins with the example of the author Gordon Clive Bleeck, virtually unknown today and not a household name in the period this volume covers. Bleeck is now considered significant because he was the major Australia pulp fiction writer of the 1950s, writing around 300 novels using about 20 pseudonyms (Johnson-Woods 2002). How do we attempt to balance the significance of Bleeck's publications against those of Australian author and Nobel laureate Patrick White, or publications from the best-selling Australian author ever, pulp fiction writer Carter Brown (Alan Yates), against twice Booker Prize winner Peter Carey? Until very recently, no Australian research libraries considered the works of Bleeck worth collecting, and certainly not worth preserving, yet today he is a subject of study. In other words, determining significance is an important, and also a challenging, area. There are issues that go right to the heart of defining our culture for the future. There are no easy answers, but if we don't get it right there are important implications for the future. Significance, as already noted, is at the heart of the Memory of the World Programme. How is it determined on an international basis? The Memory of the World Programme committee is moving very slowly on admitting items to its Register - for example, no material in digital form has as yet been admitted to it - and every item is a precedent, requiring considerable debate. Inclusions are also the subject of much politicking, and the logic for inclusion or exclusion of nominations is not always clear to the outside observer. The Register does not include any entries from the United States, which has not been a member of UNESCO since the mid-1980s; it rejoined only in September 2002. The World Register is available on the web (http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php) and in March 2003 comprised almost seventy entries, with another nominations being considered for inclusion. Its entries illustrate some of the difficulties of determining significance. While the reasons for including key documents relating to establishing nations and defining national identity (such as New Zealand's Treaty of Waitangi or its 1893 Women's Suffrage Petition) are clear enough, the reasons for including what seems to be more local material (such as the two Norwegian entries, the Leprosy Archives of Bergen and Ibsen's A Doll House) are less apparent to the outside observer. However, we can expect the reasons for inclusion and exclusion to it to become clearer as more precedents are established. Each UNESCO member country has been invited to participate by establishing a national Memory of the World Project. National co-ordination frameworks and mechanisms for the Memory of the World Programme currently exist in fifty-three countries. Australia is one of these (Memory of the World Australia 2002). In fact, there has been significant Australian input into the international project right from the start, with Jan Lyall, formerly director of the National Preservation Office, National Library of Australia, writing the first edition of the Memory of the World's Project's Guidelines, and the second edition prepared by Ray Edmondson (former Deputy Director of ScreenSound Australia (the National Screen and Sound Archive). Lost and missing documentary heritage materialIt is easy enough to understand and appreciate the need to list significant material, and the positive benefits which can result from the resulting registers, such as ensuring that resources are devoted to preserving the listed material. However, the case is not so clear for listing lost and missing significant documentary heritage material. The Memory of the World Programme is well aware that this is a difficult, perhaps impossible, task, and appreciates that all which may be feasible is to indicate the broad extent and parameters of what has been lost or is missing, rather than to list specific items. In the words of Alan Howell, a member of the Australian Memory of the World Committee, ...developing a public record of this now inaccessible heritage is a crucial means of placing the Memory of the World Program in context, and is a precursor to the possibility of virtual reconstruction of lost and dispersed memory. It adds both urgency and perspective to the challenges of identifying and protecting the surviving heritage. (Howell 2002, section 12) Glen Dudbridge's book Lost books of medieval China (2000) provides an illustration. He describes several attempts by succeeding Chinese rulers to develop complete collections of all Chinese publications, and comments: We too readily agree to form our perceptions of China's literature and history from a canon of books which owe their canonisation to the fact that they are transmitted. But what about the books that were not? Were they not part of Chinese literature too? ... transmission itself is not a wholly random process, by which some books happen to succumb to destruction and neglect, while others happen luckily to escape those fates ... transmission over long periods of time reflects an equally long series of positive value-judgements, or investment decisions, about the books in transmission ... (pp27-28) While the example of ancient China is extraordinary for several reasons, Dudbridge's comment reminds us that histories built only on what survives is faulty history. We need more publications like Davis and Cheng's paper on the destruction of Chinese books in the Peking Siege of 1900, which details the losses and the significance of the material (Davis and Cheng 1997). The Australian Memory of the World ProgramThe Australian Memory of the World Program established and maintains the Australian Memory of the World Register. This currently contains only three entries, two of which are also on the World Register. Some excerpts from one of these, Captain James Cook's Endeavour journal, indicate the level and extent of the documentation required to nominate material to the Register. Abstract 4.0 Assessment against the selection criteria 4.1 Assessment of the documentary heritage against each criterion Criterion 1 - Influence Criterion 2 - Time Criterion 3 - Place Criterion 4 - People Criterion 5 - Subject/Theme Criterion 6 - Form and Style Criterion 7 - Social value Secondary criterion 1 - Integrity Secondary criterion 2 - Rarity 4.2 Contextual assessment including an assessment of the importance of a series of documents, the importance of a series of documents in a particular setting, and the assessment against other documentary heritage 4.3 An evaluation of the authenticity Australia's lost and missing documentary heritageIncluded in the Australian Memory of the World Register will be a section devoted to the listing of lost and missing heritage. Lost heritage is material that is known to no longer survive - its decay or destruction is reliably documented or can be reliably assumed. Missing heritage is material whose current whereabouts is unknown, but whose loss cannot be confirmed or reliably assumed. This material would have been eligible for inclusion in the Register if it had survived or was accessible. There are many difficulties in recording material which is not available to be examined. For instance, precise description is unlikely to be possible, so only a general description will be provided. Additional information will be required, for instance, as full a description as possible of how the documentary heritage was lost, where this is known. Ross Harvey and Anne Lloyd from Charles Sturt University's School of Information Studies have agreed to compile a list of Australia's lost and missing documentary heritage for the Australian Memory of the World Program. No other country has yet started on this, so the methodology, that is, how to proceed, has to be defined. There are many issues still to be resolved. Methodological issuesHow can one ascertain significance if the material is not available for examination? Two sets of issues have been identified in the attempt to list Australia's lost and missing documentary heritage. First, there is the question of definitions. Do the definitions developed for the international Memory of the World Project work when applied to the Australian context? Next, there is the question of what can be called approach: how does one start? We have decided to look at genres, using two test cases - silent films and newspapers - to see if this approach works. We hope to develop a working methodology that will apply to Australia and is also likely to be applicable to other countries. DefinitionsOne of the challenges encountered relates to definitions: for instance, the terms documentary heritage and significance. The Project's definition of documentary heritage has proved to be problematic. (Definitions used in the Australian Memory of the World Program can be found in Howell 2002). Documentary heritage is defined as comprising items that are:
This definition is based on 'the primary purpose, perception or intent of the item concerned' and the example of a painting is given: when is it documentary heritage, and when is it not? Was the primary purpose of the painting to document, or is it primarily the subjective expression of the artist? So far, so good - but there's a footnote to this definition, which reads: 'However some documents, such as inscriptions, petroglyphs and rock paintings are not moveable.' In Australia, aboriginal rock paintings are an important part of indigenous culture. They are certainly not moveable. Co-researcher Anne Lloyd, who worked for many years as an archaeologist in Australia, argues that they may not fall within this definition. Although these rock paintings do fit the criteria in many respects (for instance, they were the product of a deliberate documenting process, such as to record traditional beliefs, or describe geographical features or events), they were generally created for a specific group, or members within the group, who had a communal understanding of the significance of the art or inscription, and they would not be reproduced by any other group. They are not moveable. Some would definitely fit into the 'lost' category because they have faded, or have been damaged by tourists or vandals. They have been put aside for the present and we will initially concentrate on the more traditional kinds of documentary heritage. The definition of significance is also problematic. Defining significance is difficult enough for material which is extant, as generations of librarians and archivists have realised. It reaches a new level of complexity when we attempt to apply it to lost or missing material. The Australian Memory of the World Program guidelines are well aware that 'there can be no absolute measure of cultural significance' and that assessment of significance is contextual, to be determined, in part, by what else has been added to or excluded from the Register. At this point in time, with only three items on the Australian Register, this poses a problem. The Australian Register's guidelines specify three tests: AuthenticityIs its integrity established? Has its identity and provenance been reliably established? Uniqueness, irreplaceability and influenceIs the item of Australian significance: that is, is it unique, irreplaceable; has it created great impact over a span of time and/or within a particular cultural area of Australia? Is it representative of a type? Significance: it must meet one or more of the following criteria: Time Absolute age, of itself, does not make a document significant; some documents are especially evocative of their time.
Additional comparative criteria may come into play, such as rarity: is its content or physical nature unique, or a rare exemplar? Integrity: is it complete or partial; has it been altered or damaged? Threat: is its survival in danger? For lost and missing documentary heritage material, we need to be keenly aware that its influence is comparative: that is, it must be assessed against the existing documentary record in terms of reference to the social, historical, political or aesthetic importance or influence of the item. We are, therefore, very interested in documentation: primary documents that provide a provenance for the missing item, or provide evidence which authenticates loss. We get excited if we can find reference to it in a number of authoritative sources. We get very excited if we can locate partial remains of the item. We have gone some way towards re-casting the definitions so that they better apply to lost and missing documentary heritage material, and we expect to keep refining these definitions as we identify items and document them. The question was posed earlier about whether paintings fit the definition of documentary heritage. A recently published book about a missing documentary painting produced in Tasmania is illuminating in this respect (Scheding 2002). This book describes the search for a long-missing Australian historical painting and notes (p29) an attempt to recreate an 1852 exhibition of documentary paintings. Only thirty-two out of the 359 works originally exhibited were located, which leaves 327 works which may or not still be out there somewhere. Scheding's book, although perhaps not dealing with documentary heritage, depending on how the term is defined, does indicate the painstaking and time-consuming research required to determine more about lost or missing items. ApproachAnother challenge relates to how to start listing what doesn't exist. What approach can be taken? What results can we realistically expect? The UNESCO scoping document about lost and missing heritage in libraries and archives referred to earlier (Van der Hoeven and van Albada 1996) is concerned with material covering a time span of several millennia and from many countries. Australia's post-colonial history dates only from the 1780s. It has fewer and smaller collections of documentary heritage material than longer-settled countries, with fewer major losses of this material through civil disorder or wars. In Australia, carrying out a collection-level survey of major libraries and archives such as was done in the 1996 UNESCO study (Van der Hoeven and van Albada 1996) is likely to be less fruitful. It is still, though, worth doing, with the useful by-product of raising awareness of this project. What is likely to be far more productive, but also rather more difficult, is to identify individual items of lost or missing documentary heritage (for example, Captain Arthur Fremantle's Commission to sail to Swan River, Western Australia). This may be overly ambitious, though. In some cases the individual item listing will be feasible, as has been indicated by a preliminary survey, but generally the collection-level listing may be all that is feasible to aim at. This research began with a preliminary informal survey to develop some starting points and plan a more formal approach to gathering data. The survey questions were e-mailed to nine people with a wide knowledge of Australian documentary heritage material. We asked them: 'Can you tell us about any collections or items which you think fit into the definition of lost or missing Australian documentary heritage of significance? One of these respondents posted the request onto a listserv for Australian archivists, and many more responses were received than we had anticipated. Many responses noted specific items or collections, for example:
These responses have helped to define the scope and refine the methodology further. A genre approachRather than attempt to build order from a potentially vast number of individual items which would result from a larger scale survey, a possibility is to use, as a starting point, the work already done by researchers, librarians and archivists who had produced surveys of particular subjects, media, or other categories of material. The e-mail responses provided some starting points for a list of genres, and discussions with Ray Edmondson, former deputy director of ScreenSound Australia (the National Screen and Sound Archive) provided others. A very preliminary list has been developed to test this approach. Formats/genresFilm:
Television:
Radio:
Sound Recordings:
Government Records
Commercial Records
Historical
Indigenous
Photography
Other
Two genres have been selected as case studies to test this approach. One is newspapers, where Ross Harvey has expertise and contacts with Australian newspaper historians. The other is silent film, where advice from Ray Edmondson, and Edmondson and Pike's book about Australian silent films (Edmondson and Pike 1982) has assisted considerably. This book includes a list of Australian silent feature films known to have been produced between 1900 and 1930 and contains details about which are missing, which exist only in fragments, and which are complete. While significance may be hard to define for some films, in others it is much easier. For example, The story of the Kelly Gang (1906) exists only in fragments totaling four minutes forty-eight seconds from an original seventy-five minutes. This film is definitely significant, and not just in the Australian context. Edmondson and Pike describe it as 'the progenitor of "bushranger" movies and a breakthrough of world significance in narrative filmmaking' and make the claim that it 'quite possibly introduced the feature concept to world cinema' at a time when American and European films averaged fifteen minutes (Edmondson and Pike 1982, p9). Another possible approach identified, but put on hold for the time being is to list the major Australian disasters which are likely to have resulted in loss of documentary heritage material. This might be aided by Judith Doig's book about disaster planning in Australia (Doig 1997) and by various websites which list Australian disasters and identify the nature and extent of loss in dollar terms. There could be a useful outcome if these disasters are mapped against the location of libraries and archives to see if any significant collections or items were destroyed. The results of this investigation into Australia's lost and missing documentary heritage will be disseminated through various reports and on the Australian Memory of the World Program's website. The final product will be a web publication forming part of the Australian Memory of the World site. It will be updated as required. The final report is most likely to consist of a small number of detailed nominations, and less-detailed genre studies which may include lists of specific lost or missing items. By definition it will never be complete. ConclusionThis article has described a paradox, reminding us, perhaps, of the verse by Hugh Mearns: As I was going up the stair We are attempting to identify what isn't there, and the challenge won't go away. The project illustrates one of the most critical preservation questions facing us today - that of selection, of what material we decide is worth devoting resources to maintaining, as we contemplate a future with insufficient resources to preserve all we want. Attempts such as the Memory of the World Programme may help us to understand better how to decide what is significant, and what is not. The author welcomes any suggestions of lost and missing documentary heritage material which could be considered for inclusion in the register. ReferencesDavis, DG and Cheng, H (1997). 'Destruction of Chinese books in the Peking Siege of 1900.' IFLA journal 23(2): 112-116. Doig, J (1997). Disaster recovery for archives, libraries and records management systems in Australia and New Zealand. Wagga Wagga: Centre for Information Studies. Dudbridge, G (2000). Lost books of medieval China. London: British Library. Edmondson, R and Pike, A (1982). Australia's lost films. Canberra: National Library of Australia. Howell, A (2002). Australian Memory of the World Program: Selection policy, criteria and nomination process for the Australian Register. Viewed 26 March 2003. http://members.ozemail.com.au/~aghowell/mow/amow_wrd.doc Johnson-Woods, T (2002). 'Bleeck House: Australian pulp fiction.' National Library of Australia news, Nov. 2002: 3-7. Also available at: http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2002/nov02/article1.html Lyons, M and Arnold, J (eds) (2001). A history of the book in Australia 1891-1945: a national culture in a colonised market. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Memory of the World, revised 20 March 2003, home page, viewed 26 March 2003. http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php Memory of the World Australia, revised 3 September 2002, home page, viewed 26 March 2003. http://members.ozemail.com.au/~aghowell/mow/amow_hmp.htm Peic, S (1998) 'The destruction of a nation's literary heritage: libraries in Bosnia and Hercegovina, with special reference to the National and University Library, Alexandria 10(1): 77-84. Scheding, S (2002) The national picture. Milsons Point: Vintage. Union Aid Abroad APHEDA. East Timor: National University of East Timor Report to Donors 2002, viewed 26 March 2003. [http://www.apheda.org.au/campaigns/east_timor_library.htm] - no longer active Van der Hoeven, H and van Albada, J (1996). Memory of the World: Lost Memory - Libraries and Archives destroyed in the Twentieth Century. Paris: UNESCO. [http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm/administ/pdf/] - cannot access Biographical information Dr Ross Harvey is the inaugural Professor of Library and Information Management at Charles Sturt University's School of Information Studies, taking up his appointment in 1999. He has held academic positions at Curtin University of Technology and Monash University in Australia, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and the New Zealand Library School. His current research and teaching interests include the preservation of library and archival material, especially in digital form, and nineteenth-century newspaper history. He has published widely in the fields of preservation of library and archival material, bibliographic organisation, and library education. Contact: School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, Locked Bag 675, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678, Australia, ph 02 6933 2369, e-mail: rossharvey@csu.edu.au
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