WHO'S AFRAID OF THE PAST: THE ROLE OF ARCHIVES IN SHAPING THE FUTURE OF PSBS.

Audiovisual archives play a crucial role for PSBs with regards to their function as democratic institutions. This paper discusses the importance of audiovisual archives as organic parts of PSBs and investigates structural, legal and institutional factors that impact on the state of archives using empirical evidence from four archives of PSBs in Europe. It focuses on universality as a fundamental PSB principle which it translates as availability, open and cross-border accessibility, public use and exploitation, and archives awareness. The research highlights some of the struggles and contradictions that PSBs find themselves in as a result of pressures and tensions between institutions, the market and the citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]