Networking cultural heritage: an overview of initiatives for collaboration among national libraries, museums and archives in Asia and Oceania

摘要

The rapid development of digital technology and networking and its utilisation by libraries and other organisations responsible for national heritage collections, has brought about a paradigm shift in cross domain solutions to providing access to thecontents of these repositories. The revolution in the information access and dissemination resulting from digitization and networking is creating new opportunities in both the production and consumption of information and knowledge. These changes provideopportunity to create and publish multimedia documents and to share cultural heritage materials with a world-wide audience in integrated media formats (text, image, animation, audio, video, hyperlinking). Increasingly, attention is being focused on contents of cultural heritage institutions particularly libraries, archives, museums and art galleries, and how these can be made more easily and speedily accessible to the public. A desktop survey on the internet for English language sources revealed substantial information on collaborative activities among cultural heritage institutions initiated by or involving libraries in the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia particularly. However, not much information is available about such initiatives among cultural institutions in providing access through networking of cultural heritage digital resources in the Asia Oceania region. The detailed project reports of successful collaborative initiatives provide very useful guides and lessons as well as motivation for those embarking on similar initiatives.