Access to Switzerland’s audiovisual cultural heritage
Memobase is Memoriav’s core product. As a network, the association organizes, oversees and supports projects for the long-term preservation of image and sound collections in cooperation with Swiss memory institutions and makes these documents available via Memobase.
The Memobase.ch information portal currently provides access to more than 880,000 audiovisual documents from 120 memory institutions in Switzerland, with more being added all the time.
Memobase allows interested members of the public to access a network of institutions that hold audiovisual cultural assets, and encourages the use of photos, films, sound and video documents in education, training and research. Memobase enables multilingual research in aggregated index data and if possible direct access to sound and image collections held long-term by Swiss institutions.
Memobase is available as a portal in German, French and Italian. However, the metadata and documents are in their original language, i.e. other languages are also available.
Awards for Memobase
FIAT/IFTA Archive Achievement Award 2023 – Media Management
Fair Archive Opening: SRG Archives for Academical use
https://fiatifta.org/awards-2023/
Video
The FIAT/IFTA (International Federation of Television Archives) Archive Achievement Awards yearly reward initiatives bring the professional preservation and management of audiovisual archives higher.
Best of Swiss Web Award 2023 – Public Value (Bronze)
https://www.bestofswissweb.swiss/bosw/hall-of-fame
Video
Red Dot Award 2023 – Brands & Communication
https://www.red-dot.org
Video
Red Dot Winner: Research Website. Memobase – Portal for the Audiovisual Heritage of Switzerland
Among to the most important parts of the audiovisual heritage of Switzerland are the swiss newsreels. The newsreels (1940–1975) were commissioned by the federal government and gathered political, cultural and societal news. Until the start of TV in 1953 and beside radio and newspapers it was one of the most important sources of information on current affairs, watched in the collective of movie theatres audiences.
The online publication of the swiss newsreels is a common effort of the Cinémathèque suisse, the Swiss Federal Archives and Memoriav. On memobase and recherche.bar.admin.ch, it is possible to search in multi-language metadata and play single reports or complete newsreels.
The project is supported by the Federal Office of Culture, the Ernst Goehner Foundation, the Loterie Romande, the Fondo Swisslos of the canton of Tessin as well as the public broadcasting organisation SRG SSR.
Swiss newsreels 1950. Still: Swiss Federal Archives / Cinémathèque suisse