Mousing over Papuan heritage

The Saveguarding Efforts of Papuan Tangible Cultural Heritage and Means of Accessing Documentation

Sjoerd Jaarsma

Head Papuan Cultural Heritage Foundation PACE, The Netherlands

In Mousing over Papua Heritage the prospect of digitizing items of cultural heritage from Papua, Indonesia, and using the results in education and furthering cultural identity are considered. The activities of the Papua Cultural Heritage Foundation (PACE) from Utrecht, the Netherlands, are taken as an example. Digitizing heritage can be considered a 'quick and dirty' solution to provide access to the width of the cultural variety of Papua. Even though PACE does at the moment provide public access to some 10.000 records in Dutchcontaining registration and description of heritage items, it is far from approximating the total variety of cultures in Papua.

This presentation will provide insight in what the collection does represent and what is its inherent value. More importantly it will show what still needs to be done, what are the present (and in part future) problems and pitfalls. Even though PACE has achieved a lot in its near ten year existence, it still face huge challenges.

The foundation is only starting to involve other institutions in its work, an example of one of the ways to solve this is presented. Also, the digital materials need to be returned to Papua, creating access is easy but it is only part of the problems involved.

A final issue that needs to be faced is durability. A website is in many respect the tip of an iceberg, we see its tip but how does it stay afloat and how do we manage what is hidden beneath the surface. Achieving this in more than one country with different perspectives on the heritage being digitized creates further challenges that need to be included in the final agenda of this conference.