IN the previous article, it was explained how we, at the Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT), and trying to make use of our accu¬mulated experience to expand a regional portal, which can be used by Arab countries to load their own content of different cultural aspects. It was obvious that a good
Umbrella for such a project would be the Arab League.
In fact, what happened was that the Council of Ministers of Communications and Information Technology of the Arab countries decided during a meeting in January 2004 to adopt certain projects within the Arab region, using information technology, Accordingly, in September 2006, the council selected and approved five regional projects, one of which was the “Memory of the Arab World”, which was presented by CULTNAT through the Egyptian delegation to the council.
Immediately’ in’ February 2007, the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology assigned CULT¬NAT to manage and coordinate this project. July 2007, after the council had approved the action plan presented by the centre, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology’ assigned a budget for the project to be spent on the coordination activities of the Egyptian part¬ners.
The document had also set some strate¬gic goals such as preservation of the cultur¬al memory of the Arab countries and mak¬ing it available to the coming generations, documentation of the different aspects of heritage, and the use of the latest technolo¬gies in achieving this task.
In order to prepare for such action, CULTNAT organised with the help of the Arab League, Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (ALECSO) and the Islamic, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (ISESCO) a series of workshops. During these events, both the technological and content problems were taken in hand, and they ended up forming a steeling committee of the representatives of different countries and a specialised com-mittee in every field of cultural heritage,
Also the participants decided that the steering committee should convene every SIX months and that this meeting would rotate between the different Arab countries.
During these meetings, the progress in the action plan would be discussed, as well as future steps. The participants decided that the project should start by establishing a guide that would contain a list of all pos¬sible organisations in the different Arab countries that are working in the field of cultural heritage, along with another guide for the different experts that are known in the field.
An official document was developed, stating that this project aims to document and connect Arab heritage, in addition to diffusing it on the Internet. This achieve¬ment would strengthen the cultural rela¬tions between the Arab countries, high¬lighting their contributions to different fields, and creating a sense of pride between the Arab nations.
