Your Response to an attack on UNESCO is requested.

The UNESCO Memory of the World Program was established to encourage the protection of archives of important materials. The preparation of General Guidelines for the Program was initiated through a contract with IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations), together with the compilation, by IFLA and ICA (International Council on Archives), of lists of irreparably damaged library collections and archive holdings. Through its National Commissions, UNESCO prepared a list of endangered library and archive holdings and a world list of national cinematic heritage. 

The Memory of the World Register comprises nearly 300 documents and collections from five continents. Che Guevara’s works are among 54 new additions this year. (Click here for an account of the addition.)  A number of collections have been added from the United States, including the papers of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Check out the latest from Representative Ros-Lehtinen attacking UNESCO on the Che inscription. 

http://twitchy.com/2013/07/22/sickening-rep-ileana-ros-lehtinen-blasts-unescos-che-guevara-honor/

I suggest that you reply to her tweet with a link to the Holocaust inscriptions that were also made this year to the Memory of the World Register?  The following is just a suggestion.  

@RosLehtinen Memory of the World about creating historical reference. Holocaust docs inscribed this year.  http://ow.ly/ndMVR

Here is the full url:

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/news-and-in-focus-articles/in-focus-articles/2013/spotlight-on-memory-of-the-world-heritage-the-horrors-of-the-holocaust/

UNESCO's Memory of the World: The Documents that Define Human History

The United States should nominate the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project for the Memory of the World Register

UNESCO established its Memory of the World Program in 1992. In doing so it recognized that much of the world's documentary heritage was in peril. The program seeks to facilitate the preservation of digital heritage, to make it accessible to all, and to increase awareness of significant documentary heritage. In this latter respect, UNESCO's Memory of the World Register was created to list documentary heritage of world significance and outstanding universal value.

Adding the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project to the Register would accomplish several things. First and foremost, it would increase the world's awareness of the rich heritage we possess in the archive relating to this remarkable woman. Americans know of Mrs. Roosevelt as the first lady during the Great Depression and World War II who served as the eyes and ears for her disabled husband, and as the foremost civil rights advocate of her time. The archive includes a rich source of information on that important time, a time in which the United States played a major role in world history. However, Mrs. Roosevelt was much more, perhaps the most famous woman in the world in her later life, she worked tirelessly to relieve poverty and promote human rights globally.

It is especially appropriate that UNESCO recognize the importance of Eleanor Roosevelt's contributions because she was a great supporter of the United Nations and of UNESCO. She served on the first delegation of the United States to the United Nations and chaired the commission that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Recognition of the importance of this archive by UNESCO should help maintain the support that has been so critical to the gathering, maintenance and curation of this collection of written and recorded materials.

The inclusion of this project may also serve as a demonstration project within the Memory of the World Register of how such an archive can be protected while its content is being made more available to the public and while efforts are made to bring attention to the content and teach from its riches.

The project includes papers documenting Eleanor Roosevelt’s life and political career, comprising millions of pages of records stored in libraries and archives in all fifty states, and throughout the world, The Eleanor Roosevelt Project selects the material that most genuinely reflects her work and makes it available to everyone through the digital and print publication of five volumes that reproduce her most historically significant writings, and provides readers with all the background information they need to understand and interpret it for themselves.

The project efforts bore fruit in three highly-used, Web-based projects: an electronic “mini-edition” of ER’s correspondence with John F. Kennedy during the election of 1960; a Web curriculum entitled “Teaching Eleanor Roosevelt” that the National Park Service uses to interpret the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site at Val-Kill; and the online publication of all 8,112 My Day columns that ER wrote in her 26 years as a nationally syndicated columnist. These sites (www.gwu.edu/~erpapers) receive roughly 1.2 million hits a year.

Since launching Eleanor Roosevelt on the Web, the project focus expanded to take greater account of the significant audio-visual record that ER left behind and for which the Internet furnishes an ideal means of communication. Few people know that in the aftermath of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, ER addressed the nation before her husband did—an event that the project highlights in a film produced for students, teachers, and the general public.

Preview: Eleanor Roosevelt's Use of Media



CSPAN has produced two long videos on Eleanor Roosevelt and the archives containing her papers at George Washington University. Click on the title below to transfer to CSPAN where you can play the corresponding streaming video.

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media
November 13, 2010

C‑SPAN visited the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project at George Washington University to learn about the longest serving First Lady. Mrs. Roosevelt used newspaper columns, radio, speaking tours, books, and television to communicate her ideas.

American Artifacts: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Politics
Sunday, December 26, 2010

C‑SPAN visited George Washington University’s Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project to learn more about the politics, controversies, and media savvy of the former First Lady from Project Director Allida Black. Mrs. Roosevelt, First Lady from 1933-1945, published 8,000 columns, 580 articles, 27 books, 100,000 letters, 1000 speeches, and appeared on 300 radio and television shows.

John Daly
The ideas presented in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO. 

Call for nominations: UNESCO/Jikji Memory of the World Prize

UNESCO is inviting nominations for the fourth award of the UNESCO/Jikji Memory of the World Prize. This invitation is extended to all Member States, in consultation with their National Commissions, as well as to international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) maintaining official relations with UNESCO and whose work is in the field of preservation and conservation of documentary heritage.

Click here to go to the website with full information!

The Economist on January 13 published an appreciation of Gene Smith who died in December, 2010. Tibetan monasteries had collected manuscripts over some 1500 years, until the Chinese occupation of Tibet when monasteries "were ransacked and destroyed. Not only books were burned, but also the carved wooden blocks from which they were printed. Fleeing Tibetans tried to save the texts" as they sought asylum in other countries, but many were lost; the rest were disbursed widely in the places of sanctuary.

Over five decades, Mr Smith made it his business to put Tibetan literature back together. He did it more or less single-handedly, fired by his love of the language and the culture and aided by a brain that rapidly became an encyclopedia of lineages, sutras, lives of lamas, and the history and ownership of every book he came across......

Armed only with fistfuls of rupees and with letters of introduction from his Tibetan teacher, Deshung Rinpoche, to various lamas, he trawled through Indian libraries and then travelled into the hills. There, though still fearful of exposing their treasures, exiled Tibetan monks showed him the texts they had; and, with the money he gave them, printed more. In the end the PL480 programme saved 8,000 books, each of which was printed in 20 or so copies for American centres of research.....

In 1999 Mr Smith set up the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Centre, first in Boston and then in New York, and set about putting his 12,000-volume collection, the largest anywhere, online. By his death he and his team had scanned 7m pages of text and had made CDs of files, such as the 110-volume kangyur, or teachings of the Buddha, which were too huge to download. As for the books themselves, he left them to a university in China: the place where, despite everything, he felt Tibetan Buddhism would eventually flourish again.

Perhaps Mr. Smith merits a posthumous award of the Jikji Memory of the World Prize.

Editorial: The United States should support the the Arnold Schönberg Estate for Memory of the World

Schönberg Hall at UCLA

The Government of Austria has proposed the Arnold Schönberg estate for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register for 2011. I strongly recommend that the United States Government join with Austria in sponsoring this action. Arnold Schönberg sought refuge from the Nazi government by moving to the United States in the 1930s. He lived in Los Angeles from 1934 until his death in 1951. He taught at both the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. He had an great influence on many composers worldwide, but notably during his time in the United States he taught and influenced many American composers.

Each of the universities named the building housing its music department after him. There exists an archive of materials related to his time in the United States at UCLA, and an archive of his correspondence at the Library of Congress. The major archive of his work was housed at the University of Southern California for a quarter of a century before the Arnold Schönberg family moved it to the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna. The U.S.C. library in its history of the archive states:

During its 25-year existence, the Institute Archive supported the research of thousands of researchers and scholars--hosting an average of 86 on-site researchers per year (whose average stay was 3 days each), and responding to more than 570 off-site requests for information per year (about 200 letters, 150 telephone inquiries, 90 faxes, and 140 e-mails). The Archive also provided hundreds of thousands of pages of photocopies and thousands of photographs (as well as other materials such as books, films, videos, and microfilm) to users over this period of time.

I would recommend that the United States delegation to UNESCO discuss the possibility of a joint sponsorship of the archive with the Austrian delegation, considering adding the archives in the United States to those in Austria for inclusion in the Representative List.

John Daly
The opinion presented in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO.

Editorial: A Suggestion for the Memory of the World Register

"Memory of the World" is UNESCO's program aiming at preservation and dissemination of valuable archive holdings and library collections worldwide. It maintains a register that lists documentary heritage which has been recommended by the International Advisory Committee, and endorsed by the Director-General of UNESCO, as corresponding to the selection criteria regarding world significance and outstanding universal value.

Currently, three entries are included in the register from the United States:

• John Marshall Ju/'hoan Bushman Film and Video Collection, 1950-2000
• The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming 1939), produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
• Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorumque Lustrationes

There are of course many archives and library collections in the United States. It is not clear to me by what process these three were chosen by our government as the most significant among them of the most outstanding universal value.

The United States (sometimes in cooperation with other nations) has currently suggested two archives for consideration for addition to the register:

• Dutch West India Company (Westindische Compagnie) Archives
• Landsat Program records including the Multispectral Scanner, Thematic Mapper, and Enhanced Thematic Mapper and sensors

Both of these appear strong candidates amply fulfilling the criteria for inclusion.

I have previously suggested that the U.S. Government recommend the archives of Eleanor Roosevelt's Papers at George Washington University for inclusion in the register. The papers are especially important because of Mrs. Roosevelt's critically important involvement in the creation of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They are especially relevant to UNESCO because of her support for that organization and the ideas that it represents.

This posting is to suggest that the U.S. Government recommend that the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress for inclusion in the Memory of the World Registry. Each year, the Library of Congress receives recommendations from the public as to which 25 movies ought to be included in the registry, which, with the 2010 crop, will include 550 films. This year those 25 films were selected from over 2,000 nominations. Films must be more than a decade old to be considered, and the current registry includes films a century or more old. The criteria for inclusion in the Library of Congress Registry are comparable to those of the UNESCO registry, the selection procedure is comparably strong, and the Library of Congress can be depended upon to preserve the films in the archive as well as any institution in the world. The U.S. film industry is globally important both because of its pioneering of the medium, and because of the huge impact American films have had globally over the past century.

Alternatively, the recommendation might be expanded to include the film archives of the Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center, which currently holds and conserves more than 100 million feet of nitrate film donated by the major producers of the U.S. film industry and dating from the 1890s through 1950. These films were collected by the MPCC in collaboration with the American Film Institute, which maintains the Louis B. Mayer Library which has an important archive of books, scripts, research and other film materials, and which might be included in a recommendation to UNESCO providing an exceptional archive of films and film related materials.

John Daly
The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Americans for UNESCO or any other organization.

The Library of Congress

Int'l Symposium on Heritage Recording & Information Management in the Digital Age (SMARTDoc Heritage)

The Graduate Program in Historic Preservation/School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with the R. Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (University of Leuven) are organizing an International Symposium on Heritage Recording and Information Management in the Digital Age (SMARTDoc Heritage), March 26-27, 2010 in Philadelphia, USA.

Beginning in 2006 Robin Letelier brought his vision of an integrated graduate level course in heritage recording, documentation and information management to the Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania. Today that course curriculum, now under the direction of Mario Santana, represents the synthesis of principles and practices considered fundamental knowledge for all heritage professionals. This symposium, initially planned by Robin at UPenn, is dedicated to that vision and his tireless effort to promote heritag e conservation through research, teaching, and public service.

Read more!

More information about the symposium: http://www.smartdocheritage.org

Smithsonian Film Collection Added to UNESCO Memory of the World List

The John Marshall Ju/'hoan Bushman Film and Video Collection, 1950-2000, held at the Smithsonian Institution's Human Studies Film Archives, is one of the seminal visual anthropology projects of the twentieth century. It is unique in the world for the scope of its sustained audiovisual documentation of one cultural group, the Ju/'hoansi, of the Kalahari Desert, in northeastern Namibia. Created over a span of 50 years, it is an unparalleled historical record not only of an indigenous people's traditional lifeways and ties to the land but of the transformation of these lifeways in the rapidly changing political and economic landscape that developed in concert with the struggle for Namibian independence.

Check out the Smithsonian website for the collection.

Read the Smithsonian news release.

Memory of the World Program Survey

UNESCO's Memory of the World Program was created to encourage the preservation of the valuable archival holdings and library collections all over the world and to help ensure wide access to their contents. These U.S. contributions have been registered:

• Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorumque Lustrationes (This is the first map to have the name America included. The only known copy is in the Library of Congress.)
• The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming 1939), produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

The program is currently conducting a survey and is seeking information from library, archives and museum specialists on awareness of the program and how that awareness could be increased.

Go to the survey!

Memory of the World logo competition

Image source: UNESCO

UNESCO has decided to launch an international competition for a new the logo for the Memory of the World Program. The logo should reflect the mandate of the Program which is "to promote, protect and preserve the world’s documentary heritage".

Since the logo will often be shown alongside of the UNESCO logo, the new logo should not repeat elements of the UNESCO logo. The two logos should look good side by side.

Proposals should be sent by 31 May 2009. The winner of the contest will be announced by July 2009 and will receive a monetary award of US $2,000. He/she will also be featured in a special news item on the Memory of the World website.

All rights for the selected logo will be held exclusively by UNESCO.

Read more about the competition and
the desired characteristics for the logo.

Add the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project to the Memory of the World

Eleanor Roosevelt and United Nations 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights'

Eleanor Roosevelt was a great American in her own right as well as in the role of spokesperson for her husband. Among her greatest accomplishment was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She chaired the United Nations Committee that drafted the Declaration. Her enormous prestige, in my opinion, made the Declaration possible. Her skill in the chair brought people together who were otherwise seldom able to negotiate successfully. It was her recognition that, while cultures differ as to why people have these rights, they can agree on a fundamental set of rights which must be regarded as universal.

"Once more we are in a period of uncertainty, of danger, in which not only our own safety but that of all mankind is threatened. Once more we need the qualities that inspired the development of the democratic way of life. We need imagination and integrity, courage and a high heart."
Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt was a lifelong supporter of the United Nations and of UNESCO. Not only did she chair the U.N. Human Rights Committee from 1946 to 1952, but she wrote a book to encourage people to support the United Nations, and contributed to the UNESCO Courier. (see "The Children Fight for Life" and "Partners: The United Nations and Youth")

UNESCO's Memory of the World Program seeks to guard against collective amnesia, calling upon the preservation of the valuable archive holdings and library collections all over the world ensuring their wide dissemination. The Memory of the World Register lists documentary heritage which has been recommended by the International Advisory Committee, and endorsed by the Director-General of UNESCO, as of world significance and outstanding universal value. Currently, the only U.S. contribution included in the Register is The Wizard of Oz.

The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers is a project, hosted at George Washington University, dedicated to bringing Eleanor Roosevelt's writings (and radio and television appearances) on democracy and human rights before an audience as diverse as the ones she addressed. Thus there is not only an organization responsible for maintaining the documentary legacy of this great woman, but one that is actively promoting the dissemination of her works and their use in education.

I can think of no more appropriate collection for the United States to nominate for inclusion in UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Not only do they qualify as of outstanding universal value, there is no better collection that would symbolize the U.S. efforts to create UNESCO as a means for international cooperation to advance peace and human rights.

If you agree, contact the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and second this suggestion.

Eleanor Roosevelt hosting UNESCO visit to Val-Kill in Hyde Park, NY, 1948

Calls for New Nominations for Memory of the World International Register

8th Meeting of the \
Memory of the World
International Advisory Committee (IAC),
Pretoria, South Africa, 11-15 June 2007

UNESCO is inviting new nomination proposals for inscription on its Memory of the World International Register, a list of library collections and archive holdings of world significance, which was established in 1997 to promote documentary heritage of universal value.
Nominations should ideally be submitted through the National Commission for UNESCO or the Memory of the World National Committee in the country where it is located. Proposals should be based on the selection criteria listed in the General Guidelines to Safeguard Documentary Heritage, which stipulates that the most important criterion for inscription on the register is the universal significance of the documentary heritage.

The deadline for the submission of nominations is 31 March 2008 and no late submissions will be accepted.

Check out the Memory of the World Program website.

Only two contributions from the United States have been added to the MoW Regster:

• Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorumque Lustrationes
• The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming 1939), produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (2007)

(2005)*

New inscriptions for Memory of the World Register

Thirty-eight items of documentary heritage of exceptional value have just been added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, bringing the total number of inscriptions since 1997 to 158.

From the United States of America - The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming 1939), produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: a film celebrating kindness, charity, friendship, courage, fortitude, love and generosity, released in 1939, as the Second World War was spreading across the world. It remains one of the most popular and memorable films in the history of cinema.

UNESCO launched the Memory of the World Program some years ago to encourage the preservation of the valuable archive holdings and library collections all over the world ensuring their wide dissemination.

Editorial Comment: This is an indication of how poorly the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO is doing its job. The Wizard of Oz is a nice picture, but it is far from the best the United States has to offer. The American Film Institute recently listed its considered list of the ten best American films of all time, which are:

1 CITIZEN KANE
2 THE GODFATHER
3 CASABLANCA
4 RAGING BULL
5 SINGIN' IN THE RAIN
6 GONE WITH THE WIND
7 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
8 SCHINDLER'S LIST
9 VERTIGO
10 THE WIZARD OF OZ

Citizen Kane has consistently ranked as the best American film for many years. The Godfather

also is widely considered a much better and more important film than The Wizard of Oz.

The United States should put its best foot forward when UNESCO is identifying the most important elements of world heritage. The National Commission for UNESCO should be sure that we do so. It failed on this occassion. John Daly

International Memory of the World Conference

Mabo case manuscripts
© National Library of Australia

"Communities and memories: a global perspective" is the theme of the Conference to take place in Australia next year.

In association with the Australian Memory of the World Committee and under the auspices of the Australian National Commission for UNESCO, the National Library of Australia will organize the Third International Memory of the World Conference from 19 to 22 February 2008 in Canberra, Australia.

Call for Moderators

UNESCO is the lead agency in the United Nations system for a number of aspects of the follow-up of the World Conference on the Information Society. A multi-stakeholders meeting on the follow-up efforts was held on 24 May 2007 in Geneva at the ITU Headquarters.

Read the reports and documents from the consultation.

As Action Line C8 facilitator (Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content), UNESCO is looking for Moderators for the following C8 sub-themes:

• Memory and heritage
• Local content and contemporary cultural expressions
• Linguistic diversity
• Traditional knowledge
• Indigenous peoples
• Gender
• Disabled persons

If interested, contact: m.rosi@unesco.org

U.S. citizens interested in serving as a moderator should also contact the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO or the U.S. Permanent Delegation to UNESCO.

Memory of the World

The vision of the Memory of the World Programme is that the world's documentary heritage belongs to all, should be fully preserved and protected for all and, with due recognition of cultural mores and practicalities, should be permanently accessible to all without hindrance.

The 8th Meeting of the Memory of the World International Advisory Committee (IAC) has been held in Pretoria, South Africa from 11-15 June 2007. It has been reviewing review 50 new requests for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register, submitted by 38 countries.

The United States has only one entry in the register now:

Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorumque Lustrationes (2005)* (The 1507 printed world map, prepared by the Gymnasium Vosagense, St. Dié, France under the direction of Martin Waldseemüller, is the first map on which the name America appears. The Library of Congress possesses the only known surviving copy of this map.)

The last date for submission of new nomination proposals for inscription on the Memory of the World Register will be March 31, 2007. New proposals submitted by that date will be examined during the 2008/2009 session. Click here for more information on nominations.

Editorial Comment: I believe that the United States should pledge to the world to keep safe those documents created here that are part of the world heritage. I think some suitable candidates might be:

Political documents:

• The Declaration of Independence, which has served as a model for so many other nations since it was signed.
• The U.S. Constitution, which is the oldest written national constitution of a major nation (only San Marino may be considered to have an earlier written constitution).

Culture

• Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian: Photographic Images at the Library of Congress;
  

Technology: A great gift of the United States to the world has been American technology, and it could be commemorated through the papers of our most distinguished inventors:

• Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers at the Library of Congress
• Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University
  
• Samuel F. B. Morse Papers at the Library of Congress, 1793-1919
• Eli Whitney Papers at Yale University
  
• The Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers at the Library of Congress

Incidentally, the Gayanashagowa or the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee) Six Nations, the oral constitution that created the Iroquois Confederacy, might be considered as a nomination for the Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The Gayanashagowa is said to have provided significant inspiration to Benjamin Franklin and James Madison in the writing of the United States Constitution, and thus to have inspired political thought in many nations.

New Issue of the UNESCO Courier

© UNESCO/Alida Boye
Timbuktu manuscripts

Read the special issue on the Memory of the World online (2007 - number 5).

Manuscripts, illuminations, archives, early films – the documentary heritage of humanity is fragile and threatened. For the last 15 years, UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme participates in its preservation. More documents of exceptional value are being inscribed in the Memory of the World Register from 11 to 15 June in Pretoria (South Africa).

Memory of the World

UNESCO's Memory of the World program aims at preservation and dissemination of valuable archive holdings and library collections worldwide.

Map of documentary heritages as of 2005

The Memory of the World Register lists documentary heritage which has been recommended by the International Advisory Committee and endorsed by the Director-General of UNESCO as corresponding to the selection criteria for world significance. Nominations for the Register may be submitted by any person or organization, including governments and NGOs. However, priority will be given to nominations made by or through the relevant regional or national Memory of the World committee, where one exists, or failing that, through the relevant UNESCO National Commission. (Editors note: to the best of my knowledge, there is no U.S. Memory of the World Committee. JAD)

The only registered item in the United States is the:

Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorumque Lustrationes

Made in 1507, this map is recognized as the first to show correctly the existence of a separate Western Hemisphere and of the Pacific Ocean. It is also the first printed wall map of the world. Furthermore, it is the first map to give the name of “America” to the New World, in honor of Amerigo Vespucci. Produced by Martin Waldseemüller in Saint Dié or Strasbourg, France, it contains information derived from the Spanish and Portuguese expeditions of the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

The most recent nominations from the United States were:

* The Wizard of Oz (2005 nomination) (the movie)

* The AIDS Education Global Information System (AEGiS) Millennium Collection (2002 nomination)

Other registered things include:

Austria - Final document of the Congress of Vienna

Cuba - Writings of José Martí Pérez

France - Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789-1791)

Venezuela - General Archive of the Nation - Writings of The Liberator Simón Bolívar

In view of the contributions of other nations, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives would appear a better nomination than the Wizard of Oz!

The Jikji Memory of the World Prize further promotes the objectives of the Memory of the World Program and to commemorate the inscription of the Jikji, the oldest known book of movable metal print in the world. The Prize, consisting of an award of US$ 30,000, is to be given every two years to individuals or institutions that have made significant contributions to the preservation and accessibility of documentary heritage. Last month, three out of 23 nominations received from Member States were preliminarily selected by the Bureau of the Memory of the World Program during its meeting at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris from 19 to 20 March 2007. The list includes the following institutions:

* Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the oldest sound archive of the world, which made substantial contribution to the advancement of audio and video preservation;

* French Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA), which safeguards and digitizes programmes in danger of disappearing and participates in international projects on preservation of, and access to, audiovisual heritage; and

* National Library of Malaysia, which preserved and made accessible valuable treasures.

I note that the Library of Congress is also the largest library in the world, with more than 130 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 58 million manuscripts. Why is it not on the list? JAD