The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) was established in 1969 in Amsterdam to function as a medium for international co-operation between archives that preserve recorded sound and audiovisual documents. IASA has members from 70 countries representing a broad palette of audiovisual archives and personal interests which are distinguished by their focus on particular subjects and areas, eg archives for all sorts of musical recordings, historic, literary, folkloric and ethnological sound documents, theatre productions and oral history interviews, bio-acoustics, environmental and medical sounds, linguistic and dialect recordings, as well as recordings for forensic purposes. Every three years the membership elects an Executive Board, which oversees the business of IASA. Various committees, sections and task forces are responsible for developing the work of IASA and these serve as important for an information and discussion and deal with specific areas of interest: The Organising Knowledge Committee (previously known as the Cataloguing and Documentation Committee) concerns itself with standards and rules as well as with systems, automated or manual, for the documentation and cataloguing of audiovisual media The Discography Committee deals with standards and recommended practice concerning collections of published recordings. The Technical Committee devotes itself to all technical aspects of recording, storage and reproduction, including new recordings, transfer and storage technologies. The National Archives Section is where members meet to consider issues facing national archives, e.g. acquisition policies, legal deposit, the management of large collections. The Broadcast Archives Section handles the special responsibilities of audiovisual archives in broadcasting companies. The Research Archives Section concerns itself with special issues relating to audiovisual archives whose holdings include collections of recordings origin
