THE LEISURE SOCIETY: A CHALLENGE FOR THE ARCHIVES

Abstract

The leisure society, as it is called, is not only an increase of the time available after work and of some other social obligations, but also, a promotion of new values. In the most evolved societies, this promotion continues forcing our societies to review once more the balance between the values of work and the values of leisure, between the values of the private life and the social one, between those of the society and those of the individual. The archives, as a component of the cultural patrimony, have at the moment an unquestionable instrument: the new technologies: they do not only facilitate the functions to receive, organize and conserve documents, but also to spread them, exercising their cultural action, and in this way integrating themselves in the leisure industry, leaving aside the image of static archives, with preservative functions and without no dynamism, now the dynamism is leisure–work– technologies, as one of the strategies to approach cultural, social, technological and professional changes in the 21st century.