Abstract
Libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) as memory institutions share valuable existence to preserve advanced national cultural heritage. Various causes drove LAM convergence in various cases. The Bung Karno Library in Blitar City, one of the Presidential Libraries in the Republic of Indonesia, helps explain the memory institution's convergence. The case studies indicate that collaboration and convergence face shared challenges. The authors propose that collaboration between these organizations is complicated. In the Bung Karno Library, cohesive procedure and accessibility were essential to service the user. However, removing boundaries between memory institutions in Bung Karno Library was universally accepted as necessary to improve user service and promote cultural heritage. These actions might lead to future research and boost the convergence's worth. To balance professional capability and integrate multiple systems, the researched institutions are making significant efforts. A fine balance appears needed to achieve and maintain successful convergence initiatives.
TopIntroduction
Memory institutions, including libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs), share similar administrative responsibilities and engage in activities aimed at preserving cultural and historical assets created by advanced societies. These institutions play a crucial role in organizing and managing information, therefore transforming themselves into hubs of knowledge. Given and McTavish (2010) state that LAMs, commonly known as memory institutions, fulfill the role of preserving, accumulating, and overseeing collective memory. These institutions manifest in diverse physical manifestations, such as museums that amass a wide range of artifacts, libraries that curate published and text-based library materials, and archives that preserve unpublished materials. Rasmussen and Hjørland (2023) assert that LAMs have been in existence since ancient times, exhibiting a wide range of sizes and configurations. These institutions often provide challenges in terms of their precise delineation and differentiation from one another. Since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been a growing tendency to use the abbreviation LAM to refer to these institutions collectively. This reflects a heightened interest in seeing them as a unified entity, driven in part by the apparent convergence between them.
In Europe and North America, the concept of institutional memory or cultural heritage institutions is defined by establishments such as libraries, archives, and museums. In nations such as Australia and New Zealand, the designation LAMs refers to diverse assemblages of entities or establishments that possess a societal obligation and purpose of amassing and exhibiting cultural and environmental artifacts (Davis, 2016; Mabe & Potgieter, 2021). The majority of memory institutions get public funding and are responsible for serving the government, the education sector, and society at large (Robinson, 2019). However, it is worth noting that there are memory institutions, such as libraries, archives, and museums, which are privately financed and administered but accessible to the general public (Bafadhal & Hendrawan, 2021).
Indonesia is well recognized for its extensive historical background, diverse cultural heritage, abundant natural resources, and other notable attributes. The abundance of wealth presents a substantial prospect for the populace of Indonesia. As individuals who are part of both the Indonesian and worldwide communities, we are able to perceive and use these valuable resources via a medium often referred to as information. The process of gathering and analyzing data, including textual and other media associated with an event, is the basis for obtaining information. The use of cultural heritage management may be instrumental in the effective management of primary source materials inside memory institutions, including LAMs.
Cultural heritage management procedures facilitate the preservation and accessibility of distinctive hidden collections, as well as print and digital resources, by using both traditional and creative methods. This is particularly important in the current digital information era when the need for increased collection preservation and access is paramount. As human society progresses, there arises a corresponding need to collect, store, administer, and safeguard the products of communal recollection. Consequently, there has been a proliferation of various institutions responsible for overseeing or administering collective memory. Hence, the role of LAMs as custodians of communal memory, including archives and museums, is integral to the community's endeavor to grasp its identity and navigate the realm of knowledge within that particular civilization.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Cultural Heritage Resources: Are physical and intangible assets of social, historical, artistic, scientific, or societal value. They're passed down to preserve identity, continuity, and history. Community identities, memories, and cultures rely on culture. For cultural continuity, heritage awareness, and preservation, these resources must be conserved.
Museum: Is an institution that gathers, conserves, studies, interprets, and shows cultural, artistic, historical, or scientific resources for public education and enrichment is a museum. Museums preserve and display humanity's tangible and intangible heritage, promote learning, and engage the public. They are vital organizations that preserve, interpret, and share the rich fabric of human knowledge, creativity, and history.
Tangible Cultural Heritage: Is a culture's physical history and legacy passed down through generations. It encompasses various cultural, historical, aesthetic, scientific, and socially significant artifacts, structures, and persons.
Archives: Are structured and maintained resources of historical records, papers, manuscripts, pictures, audiovisual recordings, and other sources that benefit study, historical knowledge, accountability, and cultural heritage preservation. Archives preserve the collective memory of people, organizations, communities, and society. Archives help preserve history, facilitate study, promote transparency, and protect societies' documented cultural heritage. Their windows to the past illuminate human history, culture, and governance.
Convergence: Refers to the process of moving towards a central meeting point or condition. Additionally, it may be seen as a method of implementing interventions that are executed in a synchronized, integrated, and collaborative fashion with the aim of addressing high-priority objectives.
Memory Institutions: Are assets that gather, preserve, interpret, study, and distribute cultural heritage resources. Tangible and intangible resources, records, traditions, and cultural, historical, aesthetic, scientific, or social information. Museums, archives, and libraries all serve this purpose, each with its roles and responsibilities. Resources and acquisition, conservation and preservation, research and scholarship, exhibition and interpretation, education and outreach, access and accessibility, community engagement, advocacy, and policy are memory institutions' primary functions.
Intangible Cultural Heritage: Traditions passed down from generation to generation. Actions, expressions, knowledge, abilities, and rituals vary. Intangible cultural heritage includes oral traditions and expressions, performing arts, traditional knowledge and practices, festivals and celebrations, craftsmanship and traditional crafts, language and linguistic traditions, traditional games and sports, social practices, norms, and etiquette, knowledge systems and expertise, music and dance forms, rituals and ceremonies, transmission, and education.
Information: Crucial and abstract facts or information that may transmit meaning, enhance understanding, decrease ambiguity, or influence a person, system, or entity's status, beliefs, or actions.
Cultural Heritage: Comprises a multitude of tangible and intangible elements, making it extensive and intricate. These include hereditary traits, behavioral patterns, customary rituals, and linguistic expressions. The preservation of cultural heritage is of paramount importance due to its historical, aesthetic, scientific, and social significance.
Collective Memory: Is essential to human culture and civilization. It affects people's history, present, and future. It stores cultural information, values, and identity, giving a community a feeling of continuity and belonging. Groups or communities that remember, comprehend, and interpret previous events, experiences, and cultural occurrences are all integral to collective memory.
Presidential Libraries: Serve as repositories and exhibition spaces, consolidating the records and objects associated with a President and their administration and offering them to the public for scholarly examination and discourse, free from any partisan inclinations or connections.
Libraries: Well-selected resources of information resources, materials, and services available to the public, students, academics, or a community to aid education, research, reference, and pleasure. Libraries help preserve knowledge, promote literacy, facilitate learning, and provide access to different information. As inclusive spaces for inquiry, discovery, and active interaction with information, libraries foster curiosity, education, and intellectual growth.