Republic Act 10066 or the “National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009” enacts all Local Government Units (LGUs) to submit their Local Cultural Inventory (LCI) that holds documented information on cultural properties under their jurisdiction that are “deemed important” to cultural heritage. Defined by this republic act, cultural heritage pertains to “the totality of cultural property preserved and developed through time and passed on to posterity.” The information from LGUs—together with those from other units, such as: cultural agencies, government agencies and instrumentalities, and private entities—are consolidated in the Philippine Registry of Cultural Property (PRECUP), which is managed and governed by the country’s national arts and culture agency. Based on status reports from the PRECUP Office, the country has an expectedly slow but steady rate of submissions among LGUs and other units, which has, more than 11 years since the law has been approved, grown to more than 42%, covering more than 720 municipalities, cities, and cultural and government agencies out of a total of 1,715. The paper examines the potentials of the utilization of the PRECUP in various contexts. By looking into this case study, it charts out the prospects in utilizing cultural heritage databases and the potential issues that come with them, through probing the processes of data gathering and validation. By doing so, it lays bare various aspects of the politics arguably inherent among repositories of cultural data, and the relationship between data repositories and the culture that they intend to represent.

The recording can be accessed here.