Title: Preservation of Cultural Heritage: The Strategic Role of the Library and Information Science Professionals in South East Nigeria
Abstract: Introduction Efforts to preserve resources on cultural heritage have gained new momentum throughout the world nowadays. Protecting cultural heritage is economical, as well as historical and also a cultural process. While cultural heritage preservation has not yet become firmly rooted in the Nigerian consciousness as football is, a great number of people and organizations see cultural resources as critical to the nation's economic development through tourism. Cultural heritage is based on the aspects of our past that we cherish, want to keep and pass on to future generations and outside world. However, the economic benefits of preservation are secondary to the intrinsic value of that heritage which is been preserved. As rightly observed by Sekler (2001), tangible cultural heritage has the great advantage over its intangible counterpart, such that with proper care it will remain authentic over centuries. As long as historic monuments remain without falsification and misleading imitations, they will, even in a neglected state, create a sense of continuity that is an essential part of cultural identity. Libraries, archives, and museums hold disparate collections in a variety of media, presenting a vast body of knowledge accumulated over the institutions' history, and the mission of these institutions is to make their collections accessible to intended users. Then the question, what are the roles of library and information science professionals in the preservation of cultural heritage becomes relevant here? Lynch (2002) described several roles that Librarians may play in digital libraries as digitizers of unique materials in special collections (a role also played by museums and archives). Librarians are providers of such services as virtual reference, preservation and indexing, and as managers and facilitators of scholarly communications, through their participation in establishing institutional repositories. Book and Vondracek (2006) highlighted several past involvements of libraries in the preservation of documents (reformatted or duplicated) to enhance access since medieval times when monks fastidiously transcribed documents by hand. They also indicated that libraries began massive newspaper microfilming and projects to successfully reformat thousands of rare collections and crumbling newspapers as effective means of preserving print holdings. They further noted that can also be the first step in conducting advanced research on historical materials and ancient documents present a prime candidate for because of their historical imports, combined with century of exposure and degradation. Digi CULT (2003) concluded that digitization contributes to the conservation and preservation of heritage and scientific resources, crates new educational opportunities, can be used to encourage tourism and it provides ways of improving access by the citizen to their patrimony. Also, in recent times, digitalization has played major parts in the preservation of precious materials. Making high quality images available electronically can reduce wear and tear of fragile items. According to Jones (2001), we live in an increasingly digital world. Hundreds of libraries, museums and archives have recently launched projects designed to digitize their collections and place them on the web. According to Stephen Ostrow cited by Jones (2001), this trend is both auspicious and ominous for cultural heritage institutions. The main reasons to digitize are to enhance assess and improve preservation. By digitalizing their collections, cultural heritage institutions can make information that was previously only available to a select group of researchers accessible to all. Digital projects allow users to search collections rapidly and comprehensively from anywhere at any time (Jones 2001). One of the primary problems confronting library profession is lack of commitment by the available human resources, particularly, in the areas of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and preservation of resources on cultural heritage. …
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 21
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