Selection criteria

of documents for the UNESCO Memory of the World program

The vast and extremely diverse mass of historical sources, cultural and artistic monuments and information is referred to in UNESCO's professional terminology as documentary heritage. In selecting documents for inclusion in the UNESCO Memory of the World World Register and in national registers of rare and endangered cultural and documentary heritage, practical, physical, security, or scientific, contextual, and other criteria can be applied in terms of accessibility, processing, and protection needs.

Source: www.unesco.org

The basic criteria for selecting documentary heritage for inclusion in the UNESCO Memory of the World World Lists have been established as follows:

• IMPACT - documentary heritage is of world significance if it has had a significant impact on the history and culture of the world and transcends the boundaries of national cultures;
• TIME / PERIOD / AGE - documentary heritage is of world significance if it reflects in an exceptional and unique way periods of major changes in world history and their events, or represents a significant contribution to the understanding of the world in particularly important periods of its history;
• PLACE - documentary heritage is of world significance if it contains important information about a place, area, or region that has made a decisive contribution to the main sources of development and world civilization, culture, art and science;
• PEOPLE / PERSONALITIES - documentary heritage is of world significance if it has an important relationship to the life or work of people who have made an exceptional contribution to world history, culture, destiny, science and human civilization;
• SUBJECT / TOPIC - documentary heritage is of world significance if it documents in an exceptional way important areas or central themes of world history, culture, art, science and civilizational development;
• FORM / SHAPE / STYLE - documentary heritage is of world significance due to the uniqueness of its technological solution, form of processing or method of realization.
• INTEGRITY - a high degree of wholeness, integrity, or completeness of funds and collections
• UNIQUENESS - the rarity or rarity of the occurrence of a document

All other proposed criteria, if any, will be assessed within the Memory of the World Programme committees. The relevant national committees or regional committees should make the final decision on the aspects and criteria for selecting documentary heritage for national or regional registers. All the criteria mentioned for world registers have been proposed as models. Since the beginning of the Memory of the World Programme, great attention has been paid to the selection criteria at all major international events. This issue is closely related to the basic objectives and tasks of the programme. In this context, the development and implementation of:

• world, regional and national registers and lists of rare documentary heritage,
• world lists of endangered documentary heritage,
• records of initiatives for the rescue, reconstruction and accessibility of documentary heritage,
• projects for the digitization of the most precious parts of the world's cultural and documentary heritage,
• digital editions of archival, library and also graphic, audiovisual, phonographic and other rare documents.

The selection criteria take into account a wide range of values, such as:

• importance on a global scale,
• impact (historical, cultural, artistic, scientific, socio-political, national-state, etc.)
• value of the document from a national and international perspective,
• rarity and uniqueness of the document,
• creator of the document and its significance,
• form of the document (physical criteria - material, processing technology),
• donation, scope and location of the document,
• uniqueness of the document and degree of its substitutability or irreplaceability
• rarity of the document, singularity of its occurrence,
• representative value of the document,
• scientific value of the historical source (codicological, historical, culturological, etc.),
• artistic value of the document (typographic, aesthetic, etc.),
• other special values ​​of the document (specific),
• level and condition of archival or library integrity,
• contextual criteria (links to storage objects, original buildings, interiors, furnishings, etc.),
• provenance and content links to other document sets,
• condition of the document and level of its protection,
• security of the document's storage and the degree of risk of deterioration of the document and its environment,
• frequency of use of the document,
• inadequate or emergency condition of the document and its storage,
• completeness, quality and condition of the documentation for the document,
• other properties and values ​​(open to discussion and new proposals).

UNESCO events for the Memory of the World programme considered the criteria in broad contexts from the perspective of the needs of science and research, social practice and the protection of cultural and documentary heritage.
The points and theses that emerged from the discussions of individual UNESCO events organized on the issue of the Memory of the World programme (Pultusk, Paris, etc.) can be summarized as follows:

• From the perspective of the needs for purposeful modification of individual criteria, it seems practical to establish only basic, central and universal criteria, which will be further specified, either nationally or regional committees, or individual institutions, so that they reflect their specific or individual needs in detail,
• the proposed criteria cannot be absolute, they cannot be prioritized or hierarchized as increasing or decreasing values ​​according to the position in the list,
• all criteria must be assessed and applied in combination with each other
• the criteria can therefore be modified to take into account a number of regional and local specificities
• the criteria should also take into account the needs of the cultural heritage of minorities,
• the criteria can also be modified according to how they are most optimally applicable in the conditions of libraries, archives, museums or other administrators and owners of significant documentary heritage,
• the cultural-historical and source value of a document should not necessarily depend only on the age or antiquity of the document,
• the aspect of the irreplaceability of the document or document files should be included in the list of selection criteria, as they often represent invaluable assets of funds and collections