The Mexican professor explained the work of UNESCO's Memory of the World Program, which provides international, regional and national recognition to each historical record in order to preserve documentary heritage.
Within the framework of the “Regional Symposium on Conservation and Management of Documentary Heritage (Archival and Bibliographic): Good Practices and Current Possibilities”, Dr. Gerardo Zavala Sánchez, coordinator of the degree in Library Science and Information Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, presented the presentation “Unesco Memory of the World Program: an experience from the Mexican vision.”
He explained that the memory of the world refers to the collective and documented memory of people. This heritage represents a part of the cultural heritage of humanity and is the legacy that ancestors have left to present and future communities.
Currently, said Dr. Zavala, documentary heritage is important because documentation gives identity to society and is an example of the existence and sociocultural development of people. For this reason, he noted, many institutions have been raising awareness about these documents that are being destroyed and that must be preserved for posterity.
In that sense, he said that the UNESCO program aims to give importance and recognition at the international, regional and national level to each heritage record or document that is registered.
To do this, it disseminates the registered heritage through events, awareness campaigns and alerting public powers, communities, citizens, business and commercial sectors about the need to preserve this historical documentation, he said.
Likewise, he maintained that, in the program, the concept of documentary heritage not only includes printed manuscripts and monographs, which are found in libraries and archives, but also all documents that are in audiovisual, digital, etc. media.
For example, in Mexico there is a Mexican Memory of the World Committee with which 14 records have been achieved at the international level, 28 at the regional level and 74 at the national level, Zavala commented.
Final learnings
As final reflections, Master Cristina Vargas, director of International Relations, indicated that these two days of activities of the regional symposium have left important learnings such as new reflections on heritage, the idea of unarchiveing while being respectful of the methodologies and archival work of the library to make documentation accessible and more inclusive, and the important task of disseminating these documentary archives in order to generate interest and commitment from the communities.
At the closing of the symposium, Dr. Enrique Banús, dean of the Faculty of Humanities, said that with this type of events we are contributing to making palpable how heritage is part of daily life and requires specialized professional dedication, because being Human is a patrimonial being that guards, transmits or deteriorates the patrimony; Therefore, education and heritage awareness are necessary.
“Heritage is not a specific issue for professionals but for all families and communities that have heritage assets, which are important because they tell a story and establish links with the past, with other people and with the next generations,” he said.
November 3, 2022
See original note: Here
