“The Middle East is home to extraordinary cultural heritage. The manuscripts, books, maps, videos and archives of the region are a contribution to the history of humanity, and it is therefore essential to protect and promote them to foster a dialogue between cultures; and that's what we hope to achieve through this project.” Anna Paolini, UNESCO Representative in the Arab States of the Gulf and Yemen

In September 2018, UNESCO Office to the Gulf States and Yemen, in partnership with Qatar National Library, started implementing the project Supporting documentary heritage in the Arab region. This initiative was motivated by the raising threat to documentary heritage in the region whether due to lack of resources both human and financial, the lack of equipment and infrastructure but also natural disasters, political instability and conflicts. Very little was known about the state of documentary heritage in the region and very few data were available. The project was part of the Memory of the World Programme, created within UNESCO in 1992, with the triple objective of supporting documentary heritage preservation, raising awareness about it and making it accessible to the global community. This project aimed at understanding the needs and challenges faced by documentary heritage institutions in the Arab region in order to build their capacities and strengthen exchange of knowledge and information to ensure sustainability in the preservation and promotion of the heritage they hold. The project covered 19 countries of the region: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, and relied on the coordinated work of UNESCO offices in the region and its partners. After launching a mapping exercise and a regional survey resulting in the production of a report (Documentary heritage in the Arab region: a regional survey) (Footnote 1), the project organized capacity building training to answer the needs of institutions in the region. An international conference was also organized to raise awareness and share knowledge.

This article will focus on the survey and its main findings. This survey is an original work and the first of its kind, covering 19 countries of the Arab region. It is structured around three main parts: it first gives a regional overview of the situation of documentary heritage in the Arab region; presents the regional findings delivering a cross country analysis to extract general trends; then offers an analysis of the survey data by country allowing the reader to discover the particular state of documentary heritage in each state. Here, we will only concentrate on the common features of documentary heritage preservation in the Arab region.

The report is the result of a 4 month survey distributed to 1,525 memory institutions across 19 countries of the Arab region, in both English and Arabic, including a total of 67 questions. Those questions sought to understand the strategies put in place to preserve documentary heritage as well as the challenges and needs these institutions may face. It covered legal frameworks in place at the national or institutional levels, the types of documentary heritage each institution hosts, whether institutions have a digitization strategy and infrastructural and professional capacities in this field, on preservation and conservation techniques in place, challenges and risks to documentary heritage preservation, trainings need and areas where further support would be needed. It was launched on May 8, 2019 and closed on August 21, 2019, after receiving 520 responses considered valid. With an overall participation rate of 34%, it should be highlighted that the findings of this survey do not represent all of the memory institutions of the region, it should be in contrary be perceived as a general indicator of the situation, underlining the main trends, and as a work basis for further investigation and project creation.

Through the results of this survey, 93 million items of documentary heritage were registered: from manuscripts, printed books, old newspapers, archival documents, art on paper, to heritage maps, photographs, moving image recordings, audio recordings, and micro-films, demonstrating the richness of the region. 10 different categories of memory institutions were identified: university libraries, archives, museums, religious libraries, municipal libraries, research centers, national library, other type of public libraries, family/private collections, and others. Interestingly, family/private libraries are the most represented type of institutions (38%); while it might indicate the presence of a very old inherited documentary heritage, it also reveals the precarious conditions in which they might be preserved, family/private libraries in the region being often associated with a lack of resources, infrastructure and technical capacities. Given the high response of this category, private libraries were the object of a particular focus and analysis.

Once the range of documentary heritage was established, the first area of concern was the actual state of those precious documents. The research concluded that in general and across the region the state of documentary heritage is quite poor, although the establishment of the physical condition of a document might differ according to the institution and there is no standardized tool or definition. While most of the documentary heritage surveyed needs conservation or restoration, 49% of respondents do not have a specialized conservation or preservation department nor a written conservation or restoration strategy or policy. These data exclude private libraries that usually do not employ personnel.

This documentary heritage is subject to a vast array of risks that could be found in other part of the world but are exacerbated in the region due to unavailability of equipment, the absence of proper facilities or the lack of capacity building for practitioners. For example, mold and pest infestations was identified as a major risk for 40% of all collections. Nevertheless, 60% of respondents declared not having the necessary material to treat this problem. Those institutions face difficulty to access materials for conservation and restoration, often not available in their country. For 67% of the respondents, this equipment needs to be purchased internationally, adding a financial constraint to the geographical difficulty of procurement. In terms of infrastructure, 76% of respondent expressed the lack of space to store their collections and 78% the lack of appropriate equipment such as shelves.

A particular area of concerns for this region is disaster risk management. It is already established that the region suffers from instability, conflicts and natural disasters. In the survey, 48% of the respondent considered themselves to be located in a high risk disaster zone and 43% mentioned that their collections have been impacted or threatened in the last 10 years. It appears therefore fundamental for the protection of documentary heritage that the institutions in charge with preservation have the capacity to manage disaster risk. Nevertheless, 74% of the respondents do not have disaster and emergency preparedness response plans. Although this might be balanced by the fact that 38% of those institutions are family/private libraries, that usually are not properly equipped nor staffed for documentary heritage preservation in the Arab region, it is still alarming. Furthermore, 82% of respondents have not had any staff trained in disaster and emergency preparedness response planning in the last five years. The survey revealed a lack of preparedness to face emergency situations both institutionally and technically.

This lack of training is not only confined to disaster risk management but also concerns more general themes such as collection management, documentation techniques, storage management, etc. Only 23% of all participating institutions have been able to facilitate training for staff members in the past five year period. At the same time, 50% of respondents expressed a need for collection management training and 67% for documentation techniques.

Digitization is often put forward as way to preserve documentary heritage and to promote accessibility. The survey tried therefore to understand if digitization is used within the surveyed institutions of the region and if it is fulfilling these goals of preservation and accessibility. It revealed that 30% of the institutions surveyed do have reproduction policies and digital preservation strategies in place and 53% of them need equipment for digitization. Although digitization is recognized as a way to preserve documentary heritage by those institutions, they are still facing difficulties to access the proper equipment to implement it resulting, according to the survey, in a very small number of collections digitized or microfilmed. Following the same trend, providing online access to the collections revealed to be as difficult as conducing digitization projects, and 27% of the participating institutions stated an urgent need to purchase the necessary software or improve the online platform displaying the collection.

According to the results, the surveyed institutions need support in all the aforementioned areas. Nevertheless, most of them mentioned a lack of interest or support from authorities: for 44% of them it constitutes the main risk for their collections. Financial support would be essential to improve infrastructures, procure equipment and ensure proper training, but only 16% of respondents signaled having received any kind of funding or technical assistance in the past 10 years. Government support is also expected in providing a protective legal framework, 79% of the responding private libraries expressed the need for their government to strengthen the existing laws protecting documentary heritage, and the other types of institutions agree with this statement at 48%. National legislation might exist or not to protect documentary heritage. In the cases in which it is absent, institutions have to rely mainly on international regulations with the limitations it poses in terms of on the ground implementation without a supporting local authority. At the international level, access to external sources of funding might also be problematic since only 16% of the respondents mentioned having received funding or technical assistance in the last 10 years. While the needs are obvious, there seems to be a gap with the available support both at national and international level.

This survey, while demonstrating the richness of the documentary heritage present in the region, has also revealed the extent of the risks that threatens it and the limited measures in place to mitigate them. The region suffers from natural disasters, instability and conflicts and documentary institutions are not well equipped to face those threats and need further support. They not only lack basic equipment but also adequate infrastructures, human resources, technical knowledge and training opportunities. The lack of financial and political support is also critical, and the absence of a legal framework can often leave institutions helpless in front of the challenges they have to face.

This survey constitutes only a starting point that should be used to conduct further research on the areas identified as particularly critical for documentary heritage preservation in the region. The full survey presents an analysis country by country that might be useful to better understand the particular state of documentary heritage in a given setup and orient actions. It also includes a list of recommendations based on the results to enhance support to documentary heritage.