Where are the sound recordings of a nation’s cultural heritage? What Spanish institutions dare say

Abstract

The concept of cultural heritage has evolved from limiting itself to buildings and the environment, to encompassing intangible realities, through an awareness of the importance owed to documents. UNESCO’s register of the most relevant documents of mankind already mentions some collections of sound recordings, a fact that reminds countries of the need to safeguard their sound heritage. This demands a knowledge of the whereabouts of document collections, a task calling for specialized surveys. In designing them, a recent project that tried to determine where Spanish sound archives lie can prove helpful. Its first stage analyzed previous projects aimed at surveying document collections; a taxonomy of archive types was then devised; and that classification was used by a choice of memory institutions, when requested to estimate the presence of those types in their geographical zones. in spite of the scarce information available, a significant distribution of Spanish sound archives was revealed, according to types agreed upon. And a prominent fact is that known collections may be just a small portion of the nation’s total. Therefore, the audit is offered as a reference for future studies, be they in Spain or in other nations.