World Heritage site personnel meet with UNESCO to review the essentials of archives management

A three-country series of workshops organized by the Regional Office in Bangkok (UNESCO Bangkok) is aimed at benefitting the personnel of three World Heritage Sites: Koh Ker Archaeological Site of Ancient Lingapura or Chok Gargyar (Cambodia); Borobudur Temple Compounds (Indonesia); and the Historic City of Ayutthaya (Thailand). The workshop series is part of a UNESCO and Japan Funds-In-Trust project, ‘Safeguarding World Heritage Archives in South-East Asia’. 

The project aims to strengthen cross-disciplinary work between archivists and World Heritage site managers for better management of conservation-related records and archives. The co-development of conservation strategies will be of special value to archaeologists, architects, engineers, material scientists and technicians. The project pursues two modes of implementation: 1) conducting needs assessments on record conservation and management at the participating World Heritage sites; and 2) supporting capacity-building activities for local site managers and archivists to assist such personnel in improving and better managing their site-based archival systems.

One of the key outputs of this project will be the Manual on Managing World Heritage Conservation Archives in South-East Asia, which is currently being drafted by a team of UNESCO archives and conservation experts expressly to address this sub-region’s unique challenges and resources. Once completed, this manual will be disseminated to additional World Heritage sites in South-East Asia to mainstream a cross-disciplinary collaboration between site managers and archivists in their management of valuable heritage conservation records.

In view of this objective, the ‘Safeguarding’ workshop, which took place at Borobudur in late July 2024, focused attention on key archiving concepts and principles, including cataloguing techniques, digitization and access provision, conservation, storage and disaster risk management, archives policy development and site-level multi-term action plans linking World Heritage management with archives management.

The meeting also featured field visits to Borobudur Conservation Office (BCO), the Karmawibhangga Museum, and Borobudur Temple Compounds, which aimed at deepening participants’ appreciation of good governance and the professional dedication necessary for successful site maintenance and interpretation.

The documentary heritage associated with UNESCO World Heritage Sites is critical for understanding the managing and monitoring of these sites. With a collaborative mindset at the centre of the project, UNESCO and its partners intend to improve the protection of conservation-related records that are on their way to becoming documentary heritage in their own right, and in turn are destined to contribute to a more informed approach towards World Heritage conservation and management.

The next activity under the ‘Safeguarding’ project will be an online workshop to introduce the Manual to the public.

For more information: 

• Safeguarding World Heritage Site Archives in South-East Asia

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