The International Council on Archives has chosen today as World Day for Audiovisual Heritage.  The purpose is to draw attention to the historical development of audiovisual media: cinema, photography, television, video and sound recording.  Check out the poster outlining a timeline of audiovisual development in four languages.  Modern archives contain vast quantities of audiovisual materials that document cultural heritage.  Our knowledge of our national and local history is enriched by these records.  For example, how limited would our understanding of our participation in World War II be without the “Man on the Street Interviews After the Attack on Pearl Harbor“, or of our developing cities at the turn of the 20th century if not portrayed in photographs made by the Detroit Publishing Company, all preserved at the Library of Congress.  By preserving photographs, film and sound recordings, we can explore and better understand from where we have come.  Celebrate our audiovisual heritage by visiting The UConn Story to investigate the University of Connecticut’s history through a variety of formats, watch the earliest UConn football and basketball game films  and see college life as it once was in photographs in the Digital Mosaic.

Kristin Eshelman, Curator of Multimedia Collections