Audiovisual collections, memory observatories and new cultural heritages: a comparative perspective.

The use and acceptance of oral sources in recent decades in the field of social sciences in Spain is reviewed, as well as their influence on the creation of audiovisual collections of interviews for the study of contemporary history. The lines of work of international public memory policies are framed and different cases of observatories and memory banks, both European and American, are analyzed to exemplify how new technologies have generated new opportunity scenarios for oral history. Likewise, other platforms are presented that have established themselves as useful tools for the dissemination and preservation of art and intangible cultural heritage from around the world, but that have also raised suspicions about the neocolonialist bias in the selection of their content. Finally, an inventory is made of the future challenges for the management of the collections and audiovisual archives of the new heritages.