IASA 2022 Annual Conference

In Portugal, a country that does not yet have a functional sound archive, in 2019 the Government decided to create an unit with the mission of setting up and establish the National Sound Archive. The team gathered all the technical information needed to set up the Archive and is monitoring its installation over the next few years. Starting almost from zero, the most elementary rules of common sense calls for the creation of an high level professional, sustainable and efficient archive.
Until recently, these three buzz-words seemed antagonic and a project with these three goals was a true “squaring of the circle”. With the digitization of physical sound carriers’ urge, the lack of systematic actions to safeguard that heritage, with climate change and the progressive decrease in the interval between cyclical economic and financial crises, the design of a sustainable and efficient structure, without compromising technical requirements, is crucial. This is what we have been planing and doing.
Now that the first phase of the assigned tasks came to a close, it is time to evaluate the progress and what better place to do so, than the annual meeting of the most qualified professionals, colleagues and friends, members of the IASA? With this paper I propose to present the team's activity during the last three years, its technical options, some relevant data on the national context of sound documental heritage and briefly the options, approved by the tutelage, that will constitute the basis of the future National Sound Archive.