Cultural memory represents the people's collective memory of ways of life passed down through the long arc of history. To help preserve these memories, the government inaugurated the Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank in September 2017 to accelerate the release of cultural resources for public use and encourage people to participate in the preservation of local knowledge and memories. Using systematic and thematic mechanisms, the memory bank accumulates and promotes a wealth of cultural materials native to Taiwan. The bank's website (https://memory.culture.tw) was officially launched for full public access on October 17, 2020, allowing individuals and cooperating organizations to contribute materials and stories or serve as online exhibit curators. This bottom-up approach encourages the public to play an active role in the construction of the nation's cultural memory bank and pass on the vitality of Taiwan's cultural assets to future generations.
Four features
■ A platform co-constructed from the cultural memory of ordinary people: The memory bank gathers, from various museums, special archives and local memory materials centered on Taiwan. Also collected are local historic records that span from prehistoric to modern times, from the classics to ordinary works across all locales, towns, communities and villages, and from groups of different backgrounds.
■ Smart application systems integrated with temporal and spatial information: The bank has developed smart functionalities that allow for searching materials and displaying results by time or location. As a digital museum, the website's "read stories" and "view exhibits" functions display a wealth of information organized by theme.
■ Internationally recognized Creative Commons (CC) licenses: The CC licenses allow for open access to and derivative use of materials, helping to facilitate the circulation and access of cultural content.
■ Collective authoring through a bottom-up approach: In addition to bringing importance to ordinary experiences scattered among the people, the memory bank improves the preservation of folk memories, provides creative writing functions, and allows people to share their unique memories independently.