Artigenda
World Day for Audiovisual Heritage
When: Annually, October 27.
UNESCO declared 27 October as World Day for Audiovisual Heritage to raise awareness of the importance of audiovisual heritage. The day has existed since 2005.
On this day, UNESCO aims to draw attention to audiovisual heritage worldwide and the need to care for it. A lot of material has already been lost because people could not preserve it or it was not deemed necessary to preserve it. Conflicts, wars and natural disasters have also played a role in whether certain materials could be preserved. On this day, these are also things to think about.
Freely accessible
It is also a good time to consider the extent to which collections of audiovisual material can be preserved for the future. How long will it be before a certain type of material is no longer available, for example, due to obsolescence or deterioration? Will the material still be freely accessible to everyone or only to a select few?
Not everyone is convinced that there is some value in different collections. What is valuable to one person may not necessarily be valuable to another. That sometimes makes it difficult. In this, choices are sometimes made that are difficult to explain.
Financial resources
What can further play an important role are financial resources. For instance, digitising audiovisual archives can be an expensive business. Not every organisation or every government has the financial resources for this. As a result, some collections may become inaccessible or, in extreme cases, lost.
More information
More information about the day is available on the website of UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage.
