In conserving the analogue and digital ‘mass media’ of the 20th century, the Federal Office of Culture recognises the current challenge associated with preserving Switzerland's cultural heritage.Greater emphasis is currently placed on the cataloguing and conservation of audiovisual documents and electronic publications than on the digitalisation of printed works.The information society attaches importance to sound, image and film documents, to radio and television recordings, digital media carriers and multimedia processes as contemporary documents. Audiovisual documents increasingly influence our view of the past and offer new points of reference in the process of how memory develops. They belong in the memory of the multimedia society and have to be preserved before they disintegrate.