Cultural heritage

About: Cultural heritage is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 28201 publications have been published within this topic receiving 273875 citations. The topic is also known as: cultural assets & cultural goods.

Large-scale processing, indexing and search system for Czech audio-visual cultural heritage archives

Abstract: This paper describes a complex system developed for processing, indexing and accessing data collected in large audio and audio-visual archives that make an important part of Czech cultural heritage. Recently, the system is being applied to the Czech Radio archive, namely to its oral history segment with more than 200.000 individual recordings covering almost ninety years of broadcasting in the Czech Republic and former Czechoslovakia. The ultimate goals are a) to transcribe a significant portion of the archive — with the support of speech, speaker and language recognition technology, b) index the transcriptions, and c) make the audio and text files fully searchable. So far, the system has processed and indexed over 75.000 spoken documents. Most of them come from the last two decades, but the recent demo collection includes also a series of presidential speeches since 1934. The full coverage of the archive should be available by the end of 2014.

World Heritage Sites: The Purposes and Politics of Destination Branding

Abstract: Stakeholder management and politics have been described as key component of destination branding (Balakrishnan, 2009). This article investigates the impact of political influences on destination branding by examining a sample of 94 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites (WHS) in 54 countries to determine whether democracy and political instability have a significant influence on the decisions of national tourism offices (NTOs) to promote their WHS as tourist destinations. It also examines the relative importance of political instability and democracy on the promotion of WHS by NTOs in comparison to other influences such as stewardship, economic development, and tourism. One of the key contributions of this article is that it applies a multivariate analysis to a field dominated by case study methodologies and suggests the potential complementarities between the two approaches. Democracy, it is hypothesized, facilitates the give and take inher...

Kakadu: The Making of a National Park

Abstract: Kakadu National Park is treasured by millions of Australians as a conservation icon. This work covers the story of Aboriginal involvement in its management, and offers an account of the social and political history of the establishment and development of Kakadu National Park, and includes an approach which contributes to the debate on controversial topics such as Aboriginal land rights, uranium mining and joint management of national parks. The management of Kakadu originally focused on the conservation of nature and natural resources. This has now evolved to a more balanced focus on the conservation of both its natural and cultural heritage.

“Putting Reform Into Action” — Thirty Years of the World Heritage Convention: How to Reform a Convention without Changing Its Regulations

Abstract: The World Heritage Convention, revolutionary in its conception thirty years ago, has today become the most widely accepted international legal instrument for the protection of cultural and natural heritage. Now, however, it requires adjustments if its successful implementation is to continue. These changes must not modify the Convention but must achieve an equivalent level of implementation. This article focuses on three issues, which are currently the subject of ongoing discussions: the representivity of the World Heritage List, equitable representation in the World Heritage Committee, and revision of the Operational Guidelines. The author not only describes the procedures for reform and the results achieved so far, but he also compares the legal provisions of this Convention to the other international legal instruments for the protection of cultural heritage.

Geomorphosites and geotourism

Abstract: With reference to the definition of Cultural Geomorphology, a Geomorphosite is defined as a landform with particular and significant geomorphological attributions, which qualify it as a component of a territory’s cultural heritage. This definition is illustrated with some examples. Concerning geotourism, some activities of the Italian association “Geologia e Turismo” are presented.