2.1 Acquisition

The holdings of sound and audiovisual archives may come from many sources. Some of the most common ways of developing collections are by acquisitions, donations, legal deposit, or from the archive’s own recording activities. In some types of archives, such as national sound archives or audiovisual sections of libraries or other cultural institutions, the main part of the collection consists of recordings produced by another institution or individual. Yet others, such as broadcast archives or research archives, contain recordings made either by themselves or by their administering institution. The following points address ethical issues arising from various acquisition practices.