The Preservation of Memory and the Management of Information as a Step towards Sustainable Development

Abstract

Sustainable development comprehends the balance between human activities and the environment. Today, more than ever, the need to act with respect for the environment and the urgency in recognizing that we belong to the planet, and not the other way around, have accelerated and generalized the demand for information about environmental sustainability, economic and social concerns, and the discussion about which Humanity should adopt paths to save the species. The United Nations 2030 Agenda recognizes access to information as a critical goal in the Sustainable Development Goal of promoting peaceful and inclusive societies, access to justice for all, and building effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels. In a global and inclusive society, people's access to information and the need to protect fundamental freedoms is necessarily the founding principle of the path to achieving global sustainability. The understanding of the world and society has always been founded on the study of the past, the knowledge of history, traditions, and memory. Only knowledge of memory allows us to know where we come from and to determine where we are going. Memory, which is nothing more than informational heritage, a generator agent of value and distinctive identity, is essential to create, distinguishing, and enriching socioeconomic activities based on the realities of the environment and local cultures towards socioeconomic and environmental sustainability and inclusion. In this paper, we intend to highlight the crucial role of information professionals in sustainable development, as they play unique and privileged roles in the preservation of people's identity and culture, as well as in the collection, research, processing, protection, promotion, enhancement, and transmission of information, which guarantee the viability of Humanity's cultural heritage and access to information as one of the goals of sustainable development.

Landscape and cultural heritage: Object and information

“…As already stated by Martins, Carvalho & Pinto [ 9 ], this approach is close to Freland [ 25 ] and Rodriguez Becerra [ 26 , 27 ] because it considers societal traditions, inherited from our ancestors and passed to our descendants, comprising language and customs, folklore and musical and artistic traditions, dances, homemade products and culinary specialities, crafts, trades and ancient know-how.…”

“…The obligatory path to follow is one of interdisciplinary coordination between archival, librarianship, museology, communication sciences and information science and so the author states "The presence of the museum in such an array is justified by the informative nature of the museum piece and the museum's powers of communication" [ 8 ]. As stated by Martins, Carvalho & Pinto [ 9 ] Sola [ 8 ] proposes an integrating theoretical conception, which he calls Heritology (patrimonology), presenting it as the study of the future of the collective experience, a science focused on the concept of total heritage. This holistic conception presents the vision of a “total museum”.…”

“…by Ref. [ 9 ], p. 346)) “considers important to understand the binomial mind-fact-artifact. Mindfact is the mental and emotional idea/representation, it is information ready to be materialized; Artifact is the idealized material and functional product or derived from the mental and emotional representation” and presents limitations of the separatist vision between Information Science and Museology.…”

“…In society there is a cultural choice underlying the will to bequeath this heritage, which, according to Ballart [ 28 ] and reinforced by Martins, Carvalho & Pinto [ 9 ], promotes the sense of belonging to future generations. For Silva [ 11 ], the fact that heritage allows the creation of an identity of socio-cultural values as well as the sense of belonging to “imagined communities”, is of the greatest importance [ 29 ].…”

“…As said by Martins, Carvalho & Pinto [ 9 ] "the identification, collection and safeguarding of community infocultural heritage, promoting its development and sustainability is an area of activity of the information professional and is strategically aligned with UNESCO's definition of cultural heritage [ 30 ], which includes, among others, oral traditions, social practices, festive events, knowledge and practices about nature” (p. 345).…”