Hong Kong Memory project

Hong Kong Memory (HKM) is a multi-media web site that gives free and open access to digitized materials on Hong Kong’s history, culture and heritage. The materials include text documents, photographs, posters, sound recordings, motion pictures and videos.

HKM is Hong Kong’s response to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme which calls for the preservation of valuable archive holdings and library collections all over the world through digitization to guard against collective amnesia:

The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) established the Memory of the World Programme in 1992 to promote the preservation of and access to documentary heritage around the world. Since then, many countries have set up Memory programme to protect the countless valuable textual, graphic, audio and audiovisual documents that libraries, archives and museums strive to preserve.

Objectives

To preserve Hong Kong’s historical and cultural heritage by means of digitization
To consolidate dispersed sources of local historical and cultural heritage
To ensure convenient and global access to valuable historical and cultural heritage

Vision

To share, evoke and articulate Hong Kong people’s memories
To enrich Hong Kong people’s sense of place
To enrich the younger generation’s sense of history and enable them to connect with the past and think of the future
To enrich the world’s understanding of Hong Kong by presenting its many different faces
To facilitate learning – including lifelong learning -- and research at different levels
To facilitate community participation and enhance the sense of community
To provide a new paradigm for digital archives/libraries/museums