iSchool faculty release white paper on preserving intangible cultural heritage

Preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage - drummers

The field of library and information science (LIS) has a long history of research on the preservation of materials in libraries and archives. However, that research has focused almost exclusively on tangible aspects of cultural heritage. 

Associate Professor Jerome McDonough, Associate Professor Lori Kendall, and Senior Lecturer Maria Bonn have released a white paper, "Libraries and Archives and the Preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage: Defining a Research Agenda," as part of their work on the Preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage project. Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the project has collaborated with scholars and practitioners involved in a variety of forms of intangible heritage preservation within the United States—including performing arts, culinary arts, and paper conservation—to further this important research.

The white paper discusses a variety of issues that complicate efforts to sustain intangible heritage, including cultural ownership and intellectual property, problems with the concept of authenticity in relationship to changing cultural practice, and difficulties in identifying a community of practice that can address appropriate interventions. The paper identifies several major potential areas for LIS research on intangible heritage, including:

  • understanding the role of material culture in the practice of intangible culture;
  • identifying the ways in which material culture held by libraries and archives may contribute to the transmission of intangible cultural heritage within communities;
  • developing frameworks for risk assessment of intangible cultural heritage;
  • creating inventories and bibliographies of library and archival material that may contribute to sustaining forms of intangible heritage;
  • working with communities possessing intangible heritage to develop systems of description and classification that clarify the relationships between intangible culture and library and archival materials; and
  • studying the impact of governmental and organizational policy on sustaining intangible heritage, including issues of intellectual property, resource allocation by libraries and archives, and the structuring of memory institutions and their areas of concern.

"Intangible heritage is an essential part of people’s lives," said McDonough, "and libraries and archives possess a large amount of documentary material on endangered languages, ethnobotanical and ethnopharmaceutical traditions, traditional craft practices, and other forms of at-risk intangible culture. We hope that this white paper can spark both discussion and research among libraries, archives, museums, and the communities they serve to determine how libraries can best contribute to efforts to sustain intangible cultural heritage."

Tags:
Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

iSchool researchers receive Lee Dirks Award for Best Paper

A paper authored by PhD student Yuerong Hu, HTRC Associate Director for Research Support Services Glen Layne-Worthey, Alaine Martaus (PhD '19), Professor J. Stephen Downie, and Associate Professor Jana Diesner, "Research with User-Generated Book Review Data: Legal and Ethical Pitfalls and Contextualized Mitigations," has received the Lee Dirks Award for Best Paper at iConference 2023.

iSchool instructors ranked as excellent

Fifty-one iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Fall 2022. The rankings are released every semester, and results are based on the Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) questionnaire forms maintained by Measurement and Evaluation in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. Only those instructors who gave out ICES forms during the semester and who released their data for publication are included in the list.

iSchool Building

Knox receives Oboler Memorial Award for book on intellectual freedom

Associate Professor Emily Knox has received the 2023 Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award from the Intellectual Freedom Round Table of the American Library Association (ALA). She was selected for the award, which recognizes the best published work in the area of intellectual freedom, for her book, Foundations of Intellectual Freedom (ALA Neal-Schuman, 2022).

Emily Knox

McDowell to present keynote on data storytelling

Associate Professor Kate McDowell will present the closing keynote of the Measures of Success Educator Impact Series at Western Michigan University (WMU) on March 21. The virtual series, which is sponsored by the WMUx Office of Faculty Development, focuses on equity and educator impact.

Kate McDowell

Dahlen selected as judge for National Book Awards

Associate Professor Sarah Park Dahlen has been selected by the National Book Foundation to serve as a judge for the 74th National Book Awards. The foundation chose 25 judges for this year's awards, which are given in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature.

Sarah Park Dahlen