Cultural heritage information practices and iSchools education for achieving sustainable development

Koya, Kushwanth and Chowdhury, Gobinda (2019) Cultural heritage information practices and iSchools education for achieving sustainable development. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 71 (6). pp. 696-710. ISSN 2330-1635

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Abstract

Since 2015, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) began the process of inculcating culture as part of the United Nations' (UN) post-2015 Sustainable (former Millennium) Development Goals, which member countries agreed to achieve by 2030. By conducting a thematic analysis of the 25 UN commissioned reports and policy documents, this research identifies 14 broad cultural heritage information themes that need to be practiced in order to achieve cultural sustainability, of which information platforms, information sharing, information broadcast, information quality, information usage training, information access, information collection, and contribution appear to be the significant themes. An investigation of education on cultural heritage informatics and digital humanities at iSchools (www.ischools.org) using a gap analysis framework demonstrates the core information science skills required for cultural heritage education. The research demonstrates that: (i) a thematic analysis of cultural heritage policy documents can be used to explore the key themes for cultural informatics education and research that can lead to sustainable development; and (ii) cultural heritage information education should cover a series of skills that can be categorized in five key areas, viz., information, technology, leadership, application, and people and user skills.