Sunday’s Clarín ran an article about the Audiovideoteca de Escritores de Buenos Aires, a project that is developing an online collection of audio and video featuring Argentine writers.

As a librarian who focused on developing exactly this type of digital initiative (see the Caribbean Writers’ Video Archive), I’m very glad to see this kind of project underway here. The city government of Buenos Aires seems to have an active program to document the city’s cultural heritage.

For now, only a short segment of the interview with each writer is available online. I hope that they will put the full 3-hour interviews with each writer online in the future.

One of the great benefits of this resource is that it offers the opportunity to introduce a new set of Argentine writers to the world. While Eloy Martínez is becoming more popular, educated readers are familiar with Borges and Cortázar, and the very well read know about Bioy Casares and Sabato, Audiovideoteca de Escritores de Buenos Aires enables a new audience to discover these contemporary Argentine writers. Unfortunately, of the writers presented online, very little of their works are available in English translation. I do know that some works by Juan Jose Saer and Luisa Valenzuela have been translated. Perhaps others have been of which I’m not aware.

This is potentially a great resource for scholars and students of Argentine literature and history. It should be very interesting to watch this resource grow and develop.

NOTE: the Web address listed in the Clarín is wrong. The correct URL is http://www.audiovideotecaba.gov.ar/