CURATION AND MANAGEMENT OF CULTURAL HERITAGE THROUGH LIBRARIES

Libraries, museums and archives hold valuable collections in a variety of media, presenting a vast body of knowledge rooted in the history of human civilisation. These form the repository of the wisdom of great works by thinkers of past and the present. The holdings of these institutions are priceless heritage of the mankind as they preserve documents, ideas, and the oral and written records. To value the cultural heritage and to care for it as a treasure bequeathed to us by our ancestors is the major responsibility of libraries. The past records constitute a natural resource and are indispensable to the present generation as well as to the generations to come. Libraries preserve the documentary heritage resources for which they are primarily responsible. Any loss of such materials is simply irreplaceable. Therefore, preserving this intellectual, cultural heritage becomes not only the academic commitment but also the moral responsibility of the librarians/information scientists, who are in charge of these repositories. The high quality of the papers and the discussion represent the thinking and experience of experts in their particular fields. The contributed papers also relate to the methodology used in libraries in Asia to provide access to manuscripts and cultural heritage. The volume discusses best practices in Knowledge preservation and how to collaborate and preserve the culture. The book also deals with manuscript and archives issues in the digital era. The approach of this book is concise, comprehensively, covering all major aspects of preservation and conservation through libraries. The readership of the book is not just limited to library and information science professionals, but also for those involved in conservation, preservation, restoration or other related disciplines. The book will be useful for librarians, archivists and conservators. We thank the Sunan Kalijaga University, Special Libraries Association- Asian Chapter for their trust and their constant support, all the contributors for their submissions, the members of the Local and International Committee for their reviewing effort for making this publication possible

Exploring Written Artefacts

This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’

Exploring Written Artefacts

This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’

Potent Plants, Cool Hearts: a landscape of healing in Laos

This thesis maps a landscape of healing in southern lowland Laos, demonstrating how traditional medicine and health practices engage with and occur within the local environment, set against the wider socio-political landscape. Rural fieldwork conducted with traditional healers, villagers and health staff in Champasak province utilised methods from anthropology and ethnopharmacology, and included work within state institutions. In rural Laos, traditional medicine use is commonly a response to chronic illness, as part of complex trajectories of care. Its popularity is strongly influenced both by social and familial connections and trust in practitioners associated with their reputation and positive experiences of the therapeutic encounter. Good health necessitates strengthening the blood and body boundaries to prevent illness, and attention to the mental-emotional and spiritual state. Social wellbeing and networks of care are also integral to regaining health; this is enacted during the soul-calling ceremony, a popular ritual for wellbeing. Traditional medicine forms are heterogeneous and localised, operating primarily outside the formal healthcare context, without a prominent power hierarchy with biomedicine and state regulation. Concurrently, Lao medical practices and knowledge can be situated within intersecting and layered medical and religious landscapes of Southeast, East and South Asia. Characteristics of the Lao healers’ medicines include the collection of fresh plant materials in the wild, preparation methods such as grinding raw woody parts into water, the use of unique herbal formulae, blowing techniques and mantra. Whilst tacit knowledge of medicinal plants among rural people arises through social relations and correspondences between plant names and illness forms, the healers’ knowledge is transmitted in specific forms. In treating illness such as fever, healers formulate a complete treatment based on symptom patterns. To ensure potency, the healers follow the logic of phitsanu, which frames efficacy through sources of spiritual power based in local cosmologies, and draw on natural forces such as van plants and astrology. They must thus regulate their actions to protect themselves and their patients from harm

Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World

The book contains essays on current issues in arts and humanities in which peoples and cultures compete as well as collaborate in globalizing the world while maintaining their uniqueness as viewed from cross- and inter-disciplinary perspectives. The book covers areas such as literature, cultural studies, archaeology, philosophy, history, language studies, information and literacy studies, and area studies. Asia and the Pacific are the particular regions that the conference focuses on as they have become new centers of knowledge production in arts and humanities and, in the future, seem to be able to grow significantly as a major contributor of culture, science and arts to the globalized world. The book will help shed light on what arts and humanities scholars in Asia and the Pacific have done in terms of research and knowledge development, as well as the new frontiers of research that have been explored and opening up, which can connect the two regions with the rest of the globe

The Mists of Ramanna

Scholars have long accepted the belief that a Theravada Buddhist Mon kingdom, Ramannadesa, flourished in coastal Lower Burma until it was conquered in 1057 by King Aniruddha of Pagan—which then became, in essence, the new custodian and repository of Mon culture in the Upper Burmese interior. This scenario, which Aung-Thwin calls the ""Mon Paradigm,"" has circumscribed much of the scholarship on early Burma and significantly shaped the history of Southeast Asia for more than a century. Now, in a masterful reassessment of Burmese history, Michael Aung-Thwin reexamines the original contemporary accounts and sources without finding any evidence of an early Theravada Mon polity or a conquest by Aniruddha. The paradigm, he finds, cannot be sustained. Aung-Thwin meticulously traces the paradigm's creation to the merging of two temporally, causally, and contextually unrelated Mon and Burmese narratives

“Parallel Worlds“. Clusters for a Theory of Concepts of Communications. Historical Intercultural and Cultural Comparative Studies in Perspectives of National and Transnational Constitutions, Values, Concepts, and Terms of ‘Communication’ - ‘Orality’ - ‘Literacy’ - ‘Rhetoric’ - ‘Media’.

This is a study regarding the history of communication based on several clusters traced back from ancient time to the 21st century. It contains also in the second part chapers on the specific conditions of communications in different cultures

“Parallel Worlds“. Clusters for a Theory of Concepts of Communications. Historical Intercultural and Cultural Comparative Studies in Perspectives of National and Transnational Constitutions, Values, Concepts, and Terms of ‘Communication’ - ‘Orality’ - ‘Literacy’ - ‘Rhetoric’ - ‘Media’.

This is a study regarding the history of communication based on several clusters traced back from ancient time to the 21st century. It contains also in the second part chapers on the specific conditions of communications in different cultures

Masks praxis: theories and practices in modern drama

Mask Praxis is an investigation of the theories and practices behind the uses of the mask in modern drama from 1896 to 2004. The study traces the crisis in humanism through the use of idealist and materialist masks by theatre practitioners and explains how the search for a unified field was overlaid by fractured identities and a slide into dissonance. How important are the masks that people adopt on the stage for understanding their actions in society? How does the metaphorical power and perceptual ambiguity of the mask correlate with intentions of its maker and performer? What is the relationship between the mask and the face of the actor, and what does the mask do that cannot be done unaided? What are the main approaches to actor training that have used masks, and how are these training systems connected to wider belief systems? What do we learn from the act of masking about self-perception and social being, and what are the principal considerations that this gives rise to? This investigation proceeds from a consideration of major theories and practices. Chapter 1 examines mask performance theories, conventions, and typologies. Chapter 2 analyses the specificity of the mask, materials and methods, representative mask-makers and provides casebook studies on the Sartori family and the Masks for Menander Project. Chapter 3 evaluates actor-training under the mask from Copeau to Lecoq. Chapter 4 assesses the masks of idealist modernism and Chapter 5 considers the masks of materialist modernism. The final chapter is dedicated to transnational flows, multinational productions and the notion of connectivity. It brings new evidence to bear on the emergent field of masks, puppets and performing objects and sets down a major overview of the mask as a primary iconographic tool and as a liminoid instrument from which to mediate and direct the flow of power in a system

Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization

Since the early transformation of European music practice and theory in the cultural centers of Asia, Latin America, and Africa around 1900, it has become necessary for music history to be conceived globally - a challenge that musicology has hardly faced yet. This book discusses the effects of cultural globalization on processes of composition and distribution of art music in the 20th and 21st century. Christian Utz provides the foundations of a global music historiography, building on new models such as transnationalism, entangled histories, and reflexive globalization. The relationship between music and broader changes in society forms the central focus and is treated as a pivotal music-historical dynamic