Personal archives preserved in Argentine university libraries and their importance for research and culture

Nowadays, it is notorious the interest that exists in the academic community for personal archives. In the survey of literature published in Latin America, texts on a specific personal archive predominate -from which the notion of personal archive is elaborated, as well as its organization, description and preservation-, but experiences in libraries are scarce. The objective of this exploratory-descriptive research is to to know, through a survey, the cohabitation of personal archives in Argentine public and private university libraries, as well as the opinion of their authorities regarding the availability of this type of documents in their institutions. The population of study was made up of libraries belonging to 131 institutions of higher education, and for data collection a questionnaire was developed. With 35 responses obtained, the results show that half of the libraries have this type of material, that most of them have made an instrument of description, that 40% have started their digitization and 17% have archival policies, and that 80% of library managers value positively the reception of personal papers. Signs all of them, that libraries are rethinking their practices and policies against these valuable sources of information.