Abstract/Résumé/Resumen
This article aims to shed light over a little known aspect of the Archive of the Brazilian Academy of Letters: its audiovisual collection. We start from the history of the Academy, since its inception, the creation and subsequent revitalization of its Archive, to the conceptual divisions that characterize it and led to the creation of its audiovisual collection, still in the 60s, when the “Film Library” was launched. General issues related to the conservation of the media and the contents, as well as the current challenges imposed upon the audiovisual archives were observed, explaining in detail the technical treatment performed on the materials supported by photochemical media and the specificities of the items that compose this collection. Some issues are raised, such as the protection and safeguard of audiovisual contents that relates to the preservation of the different media and of its reading and reproduction devices, in addition to the need for scanning and also issues about digital preservation.
