All over the world, the preservation and nurture of cultural memory is becoming less and less important in terms of political priorities and public investment. Museums, monuments, archives and libraries are pitted against the vibrancy of constantly changing new technologies; and the conviction is spreading that planning for the future must be at the cost of a gradual marginalisation of the past, which is seen as a passive burden, rather than an active force, a reserve of cultural and moral energy to draw on.