What we have achieved

We are proud of two highlights of 2023-25 which will continue to drive CCH work in the next two years. First, the establishment of a Digital Cultural Heritage Network, approved by the Governing Board in February 2025, with the Network’s first meeting to take place at WLIC in Astana. With sponsors including the National Libraries, IT, and News Media Sections and AI SIG, this Network will enable discussion involving the wide range of professionals who engage with ethical, technical and curatorial aspects of digital cultural heritage, to identify, share, centralise, and promote good practice.

Second, the paper ‘Documentary Heritage and the Role of Libraries: A Southern African perspective’, a key milestone in CCH’s activity to increase understanding of documentary heritage in the library sector and more generally. It has been exciting to have this work led from the Global South, often historically marginalised in the international dialogues that shape these definitions.

Group photo of the workshop.
Cape Town, South Africa, 12 February, 2025. PHOTO: David A. Larsen / Africa Media Online

Cultural Heritage priorities

CCH had a number of key areas of activity across 2023-25.

What is documentary heritage?

CCH wants to improve communications about cultural heritage activity across IFLA, understanding within IFLA and for the library sector about what cultural heritage and documentary heritage mean, and within IFLA, for the library sector and key stakeholders and partners about the role of libraries and IFLA in preserving it

CCH identified that the first issue of documentary heritage is that there is not a shared global understanding of what it

means, and that often definitions are driven by concepts of traditional Western heritage. Therefore led by members from the Global South, Howadya Kamel and Ujala Satgoor, CCH carried out a survey to solicit evidence of what understanding there is and whether documentary heritage is included in cultural heritage legislation at national level. This provided a springboard for the 2025 midyear meeting hosted by Ujala Satgoor, where a workshop ‘Towards an understanding of documentary heritage’ developed a position paper which will inform future work on the project. Key ideas that emerged included the relationship of documentary and intangible cultural heritage and the role of libraries as spaces for recording, performance and discovery.

Cultural Heritage at Risk

Including situation monitoring of issues: climate, theft and trafficking, disaster planning, conflict and emergency response, and international co-operation in this area

Two longstanding collaborations with external partners in the field of theft and trafficking continue to be fruitful. The first is with the ICA (International Council on Archives) in the field of preventing theft and trafficking, resulting in the production of a guide to be launched at the ICA Congress in Barcelona in October 2025. Aimed at both law enforcement and library/archive professionals, this will offer tools from a paper guide useful in the field to extensive online materials illustrating documentary heritage. The collaboration with the ICA has also enabled useful and constructive discussion on areas of important sectoral difference between library and archival responsibilities and practice. The second is with ILAB, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, with ongoing work to increase transparency about cases of loss and theft and to encourage an ethical approach to provenance and collecting.

Digital Cultural Heritage Network

Maureen Pennock led the Committee’s work in developing a proposal and soliciting support across the organization, and will continue to lead it in 2025-27.

Access to documentary heritage

CCH also notes to take forward actions responding to the deliberate targeting of particular languages, cultures, histories and ideas at scale in conflict situations, including pursuing with FAIFE the importance of people’s right to access their own cultural heritage and to advocate for freedom of access to multiple perspectives on cultural heritage. CCH understands access to documentary heritage to include not just the preservation of important originals but also access to surrogates and contextualizing materials.

Relation with UNESCO

The Committee supported IFLA’s policy and advocacy work through providing expert advice and active participation at events including the 2024 UNESCO Memory of the World Global Policy Forum, as well as preparation for MONDIACULT, the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development.

How we work

In 2023-25 one of the strengths of CCH has been the diversity of its membership. Members’ professional and sectoral backgrounds from conservation expertise to Indigenous library leadership, alongside their different regional backgrounds, have led to open, reflective work which reflects awareness of the full range of global issues, opportunities and risks for cultural heritage. The mid-term meeting in 2025 offered a valuable chance for focused work combined with the opportunity to gain an understanding of regional issues and to be inspired by local achievements and activities in the field.

CCH includes Ex Officio representatives from several Professional Units whose work involves cultural heritage, PAC Centres, and IFLA’s liaison to UNESCO’s Memory of the World register. We felt the lack of a WLIC in 2024 as a space to foster connections between CCH, IFLA policy activity and all the Professional Units who are active in cultural heritage. Liisa Savolainen stands down after four years representing National Libraries: her commitment and active contributions to the work of CCH are appreciated.

Cultural heritage trends – increasing risks, new roles for libraries

The Committee has carried out its work at a time of increasing risk to documentary heritage through the combined impact of climate change, conflict situations, cyber attacks, the deliberate targeting of original and rare materials through theft and trafficking, and the attempted destruction of records of particular languages, cultures and histories. As regards disaster preparation and response, there is a strong international field providing advice and advocacy for the preservation of cultural heritage. There is still work to be done firstly to raise awareness across that field, with our external stakeholders, and in libraries themselves that our buildings and collections often contain valuable cultural heritage. Secondly, to raise awareness of good preparedness and response methods for documentary heritage, and thirdly to embed active understanding and practice in libraries. IFLA’s active contribution to the international field must continue alongside work to share and embed good practice at every level in the library sector. As noted at the July Governing Board meeting, with the closure of IFLA’s own Register of Documentary Heritage at Risk, CCH has to set a direction for future focused work in this area where IFLA adds a clear benefit and does not duplicate other initiatives.

Contemporary documentary heritage faces particular risks: the challenges to collecting, preserving and recording the knowledge and culture of the world in the digital age are different. CCH’s work in the past two years has begun to develop an understanding of a new role for libraries as spaces where heritage can be recorded, and for library professionals as enablers of that recording as well as preservers and sharers of it. There is also a challenge of selection and curation: as so much content is created and transmitted, who determines what is worthy of long term preservation and how it is preserved? The new Network for Digital Cultural Heritage will provide an opportunity for IFLA members to come together to consider these issues and how to respond to them.

As in so many aspects of library work, AI is already impacting cultural heritage. The scraping of large corpora of digitized materials without due ethical process can result in biased outputs, and can also result in limits on what will be available to be preserved and enjoyed freely as creators and rightsholders respond by locking down content. Technological change can result in it being easier to create convincing fakes and forgeries, and to generate and disseminate misinformation about what original texts actually said. The centuries-old role of libraries as keepers and transmitters of texts with a clear chain of authenticity will have a new importance in the age of ‘AI slop’.

The work of cultural heritage professionals is about preserving documentary heritage, but it is also about recording it and making it available. How this happens varies across regions, types of library and types of heritage. Some countries have active formal or informal professional networks specifically for cultural heritage, but IFLA could usefully more strongly support library associations and regions in developing professional knowledge-sharing and collaboration where there is not an existing strong tradition.

Helen Vincent
Chair, CCH 2023-25