The Role of Cultural Community Centers in Preserving Tangible Cultural Heritage: A Case Study of Oman Memory Centre

The Sultanate of Oman enjoys a rich heritage manifested in the deep-rooted culture of traditions, sciences, costumes, arts, unique fashion, and architecture. This rich cultural heritage is passed down across generations with various and variable circumstances which contributes to raising awareness of the authentic society foundations and instills a sense of identity belonging and pride. Therefore, a sense of responsibility, and individual, societal, and institutional involvement is deepened; hence, this preserves and improves that heritage. Oman Memory Centre has stood as a significant example of a cultural community center with a scientific research character. Additionally, this Centre is considered an incubator for Omani studies, contributing to the preservation of the tangible cultural heritage, including manuscripts, documents, photographs, written works, and coins. This research aims to study the Centre's scientific research experience, besides shedding light on its establishment phases as well as its contribution to identifying Oman's tangible heritage elements and their availability. It also addresses the efforts made by the Centre to serve and enlighten the researchers with subjects and items offered after the process of collecting, verifying, documentation, and digitization. Furthermore, this paper explores the Centre's administrative, financial, technical, and human capital challenges as well as the main projects and partnerships that support its role and contribution. The descriptive-analytical method will be adopted in this research in order to identify the Oman Memory Centre's scope, sections, facilities, and efforts made to apply its vision and achieve its purpose. The interview approach will be used with the Centre's founders as a means to understand their efforts, roles, and partnerships of the Centre aiming at preserving the Omani tangible cultural heritage and serving scientific research.