21 Dec 2003

Pacific Cultural Heritage Materials
UNESCO, New Delhi, India
Self-description: "The needs of libraries and archives to preserve their collections related to the Pacific and to make them accessible through digitisation are discussed in a study entitled 'Pacific Cultural Heritage Materials: A Desk Survey of Print & Documentary Collections' by Sin Joan Yee of the Library of the University of the South Pacific in in Suva, Fiji, that is now online available. The desk study was initiated by UNESCO as a follow-up to the Expert Meeting 'Pacific Pathways: Digital Libraries and Archives in the Pacific' that was held at the National Library of New Zealand, 12-15 November 2002.
This desk study/survey [File PacCultreport1&bib.pdf, PDF format, 491Kb file - ed.] aims to identify collections that have been digitised and those that are available online within and outside the Pacific region, and recommend how these could be best made available to educational and cultural institutes in the Pacific and to the public at large. It also intends to identify collections that have not yet been digitised, and provide advice on the viability and cost of digitising these collections
Collections of print and documentary collections of Pacific cultural heritage materials are scattered throughout the world including the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, USA and within the Pacific Islands themselves. Collections identified include photographs, archival materials such as correspondence, newspapers, out-of-print rare books, postcards, etc.
The study explores the pros and cons of digitisation in the Pacific context."
URL http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=13319&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201
Internet Archive (www.archive.org) [due to technical problems at www.archive.org details of the archival versions of the Pacific Cultural Heritage Materials site were not available at the time of this abstract]
Link reported by: T. Matthew Ciolek (tmciolek[use"@"]coombs.anu.edu.au)
* Resource type [news - documents - study - corporate info. - online guide]: Study
* Publisher [academic - business - govt. - library/museum - NGO - other]: Other
* Scholarly usefulness [essential - v.useful - useful - interesting - marginal]: V.Useful
* External links to the resource [over 3,000 - under 3,000 - under 1,000 - under 300 - under 100 - under 30]: under 30