Background

World Heritage Memory Net (WHMNet) is a model global digital library of cultural, historical, and heritage collections related to the current 981 World Heritage Sites - 759 of these are "cultural" sites, 193 "natural", and 29 "mixed" - of 160 countries/states parties inscribed by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. Of these 981, 38 sites are "in danger". 

WHMNet is an online knowledge base which provides universal access to multilingual, multimedia and multiformat resources from museums, archives, libraries, and world bibliographic and Web resources, and includes photographs, videos, 3D videos, audio clips, and documents. Currently the WHMNet Collection has more than 43,000 images, 27 video tours and many more video documentaries from available sources.  Detailed descriptive information is presented in multilingual format in at least 6 UNESCO official languages and in many additional languages when available.  In total, more than 100 world languages are represented. 

Directed by Dr. Ching-chih Chen of the US nonprofit and tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, Global Connection and Collaboration (GlobalCC), and supported until August 2010 by the US National Science Foundation (NSF)/International Digital Library Program (IDLP) as a part of her Global Memory Net (GMNet), WHMNet is the result of a multi-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in November 2006 between the UNESCO World Heritage Center (WHC)* and Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts, USA under the leadership of Dr. Ching-chih Chen, who was then information technology Professor at Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science.  Since September 2010 to the present, WHMNet has been supported by GlobalCC for both the site's public launching and its continuing inclusion of new sites of 2011 and years to come.

The WHMNet project, which began in July 2007, benefits greatly from Dr. Chen's Global Memory Net (GMNet), an online world image library and gateway to cultural, historical, and heritage images around the world, created with a multi-year grant from NSF/IDLP. WHMNet leverages the GMNet's innovative integrated multimedia content retrieval system (i-M-C-S) with considerable further system development and modification. 

* We want to acknowledge Dr. Francesco Bandarin, Assistant Director-General for Culture of UNESCO and former Director of the World Heritage Centre of UNESCO for his interest in working with us and for his kind encouragement during the project. Without this partnership, there would have been no World Heritage Memory Net project. We also appreciate greatly the constant and invaluable support and guidance from Marielle Richon of WHC who has served as the project liaison between WHC and Dr. Chen during the past 4 years.