The Director-General of UNESCO has announced that the National Archives of Australia has been awarded the 2011 UNESCO/Jikji Memory of the World prize for innovation in preserving digital records and heritage documents.
The prize recognises the Archives' ability to be innovative in this area, its willingness to share the results of its research and its professional leadership. Over the last 40 years, the Archives has become a world leader in the archival profession, consistently sharing professional expertise through numerous publications and open source tools for digital preservation. The prize also recognises the Archives for its worldwide investigation into the conservation issues of parchment documents written in iron gall ink, which are vulnerable to iron gall corrosion.
Below is the link to the media release issued by the UNESCO/Jiki Memory of the World Prize:
The Jikji is the earliest known book printed with movable metal type in 1377. The UNESCO/Jikji prize was established in 2004 in cooperation with the South Korean government to promote the objectives of the Memory of the World Program. The US$30,000 prize is awarded biennially. Previous winners are the Czech Republic, Austria and Malaysia.
The prize money will go to fund a conservation student placement at the Archives as an investment in the future of documentary heritage preservation.
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