Cultural heritage includes both tangible and intangible representations of value systems, beliefs, traditions and lifestyles. These can be represented by monuments, archeological sites and artifacts.
Cultural heritage preservation requires the support of both custodians and supporters. But it is important to note that preserving culture does not necessarily mean perpetuating harmful or negative cycles of abuse or false beliefs.
Artifacts
Artifacts—physical objects that bear witness to a culture’s past, present or future—are an essential element of cultural heritage. They can be consulted in different ways by scholars studying a given culture. For example, the first edition of a Charles Dickens novel may be useful to a historian of Victorian England interested in the economics of book publishing, an art historian concerned with differences between versions of the work and a textual scholar interested in layout and word choice.
Intangible cultural heritage attributes, like traditions, music, dance, oral history, social practices and craftsmanship, are also part of a country’s heritage. Such heritage characterizes and distinguishes a society, and is the basis of its unique identity.
Libraries collect, conserve and provide access to this heritage. This involves weighing the relative merits of competing claims on scarce preservation resources. Scholars and library professionals are called to reconsider the hierarchy that traditionally exists among research collections. The issue is particularly important when dealing with the legacy of colonialism, in which nations that once held a nation’s heritage are still reaping the financial and cultural benefits of those assets.
Monuments
Monuments are significant because they embody a particular narrative central to the culture they represent. This makes them much more than mere physical artifacts; they become cultural heritage when a community sees the values of that history as its own. When that happens, it doesn’t matter if the story itself is flawed. As we’ve seen in recent debates about the removal of statues of figures associated with periods of British imperialism, or even more recently about a nose being removed from a sculpture of Queen Victoria in Bristol, a statue can be both loved and reviled as people’s perceptions change over time.
In fact, that’s a key point about monuments: the meanings attributed to them by different social groups are rarely fixed or certain, and thus they can be contested. The destruction or damage of these objects diminishes a community’s sense of its own heritage, as well as the heritage of all humanity. That’s why protecting the heritage of a community is so important.
Sites
A cultural heritage site can be a monument, a historic town, or a natural landscape. Natural areas that are of special significance to humanity are designated as World Heritage Sites by an international programme overseen by UNESCO and managed by ICOMOS.
Some natural landscapes become cultural heritage sites because of their aesthetic beauty or for the special conditions that enable them to sustain rare forms of life. For example, the rocky mountains of Antarctica have a particular aesthetic quality and are important to the conservation of biodiversity.
A site must be nominated and evaluated by a committee if it is to be included in the list of cultural heritage. The committee must decide whether a site meets one or more of the criteria for Outstanding Universal Value and then inscribe it on the World Heritage List. Each cultural heritage site must also be looked after by a local authority. Tourism, recreational activities and related artisanal and design enterprises are the main sources of income for most cultural heritage sites.
Cultures
When people think of cultural heritage, they may imagine art, monuments, historic buildings and archaeological sites. But it is a much broader concept, and includes all the traditions that bind a society together.
These traditions are often intangible, like the language a group uses or the way they dress. They can also be non-physical, such as the idea a group has about their culture or a shared value system. This is what distinguishes one culture from another, and it can be passed down from generation to generation.
These cultures, whether they are embodied in the traditional arts or a city’s architecture, are vital to the sense of identity that people feel when they belong to a community. Preserving these cultures helps them face present challenges and prepare for the future. When people can relate to their heritage, they are more empowered to help the world around them.