Mushiboshi Research Poster

Many of the instances of preservation practices noted in the research found thus far are an accumulation of facts found in disparate sources in the library literature. A possible course for further research is to apply work done in other ethno scientific fields, such Anthropology and Sociology, to find successful preservation techniques that are associated with a cultural context or domesticity. These approaches rely on the capture of oral histories. The 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage defines cultural heritage as “such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.”  Other alternative approaches such as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) or Prior Art research can yield further results of traditional technologies.

Methodology

Updated March 2017- Survey 1- Cultural Institutions Professionals

Our first survey will be focused on preservation professionals in libraries or other cultural institutions.  We will be sending out two variations:

• Variation 1:   The first group will be comprised of preservation professionals, we will be targeting professionals at different size institutions, from large research libraries to small historical societies.
• Variation 2:   The first group surveyed will be sent to cultural institutions that we have identified as having their collection preserved through cultural and religious practices.

We will also have several open ended questions about non-traditional preservation practices.

Survey 2- Informational Interviews

We plan on conducting several information interviews with cultural anthropologists.  We believe that the cultural anthropologists unknowingly have data and information on non-traditional preservation methods, especially those based on cultural and religious practices.

Survey 3 – Crowdsourced Survey

We are hoping to build a crowdsourcing website to poll the public for cultural practices.  The questions that we will poll the public will largely be based on the results from the first survey and the informational interviews.  We understand that we will need IRB approval for this survey.

Resources

Lisa Vallen, Mushiboshi Project: Looking at Non-Traditional Preservation Methods
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCfXlSI5GKU
Published on Apr 12, 2016