Years ago we had a book section on this website. It fell victim to one of the many refurbishments, mostly because its content was quite static. However, books about UNESCO World Heritage Sites and the process around it keep on being published, and I have reviewed a number of them recently in blog posts. So I thought it would be a good idea to revive the “ Resources about WHS ” corner and extend it to include more contemporary media such as videos and podcasts.
Books
The Book section is an extension of the original listings from 2005. Recent notable additions include a new publication on India’s 38 WHS and an ethnographic study of the World Heritage arena. You can sort them by country or year of publication.
The selection will be limited to studies about the World Heritage Process, generic overviews of WHS in countries, or volumes by theme (such as forests, coastal sites). It does not include site-specific books without a WH angle – it would be too much to include every book ever made about the Colosseum for example. It's also not meant to be an all-encompassing inventory, you can do a search on Amazon for that.
I decided to keep the ‘old books’, though you may only still be able to find some of them in your local thrift shop or Solivagant ’s bookcase!
Podcasts
Totally new is the Podcast section . On long flights, bus rides and even lying in bed in the evening I enjoy listening to a captivating podcast about a WH-related subject. I don’t know of any podcast series that solely focuses on WHS, but there are plenty that will prepare you for a visit. Even UNESCO’s WHC is asking for podcasts now for its 50th birthday!
I focused here on the series and not so much on the individual podcasts. To be included they must be relevant to the World Heritage subject of course, but contrary to the book section site-specific episodes are still worth having here. I'd like to end up with a summary of ‘podcast tips’ that you’d want to recommend to a friend. They must be fun or interesting to listen to.
When we collect a lot of them, they could be presented per individual WHS in the future. But first, let’s see what you come up with regarding suggestions. Meltwaterfalls has teased me for long that he has a whole list that he wants to share!
Other media
Inherited from the past incarnation is the section on “ Articles ”: downloadable scientific studies about World Heritage listings. They are still valuable to those who want to read up on the subject. And I added a video section - there’s Joel and Shandos for example who have been vlogging about WHS for several years now, they deserve a mention.
Do you have suggestions for additions to the lists of resources? Or know of even more types of media that have WH-related content? Post them below or in the “WHS in the media” Forum topic.