Private Collectors: Key Actors for the Research on the Second World War Illustrated Press. The Case of the Fernández-Xesta Archives ; Les collectionneurs privés : des acteurs essentiels pour la recherche sur la presse illustrée de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. L’exemple des Archives Fernández-Xesta

International audience ; The “digital revolution” has made a huge number of press sources available in recent years. Nevertheless, some press organs are absent from the large programs facilitating the access and the scientific treatment of the resources. This applies in particular to the period of the Second World War, both because of copyright laws and because of the very sensitive political nature of documents whose propagandistic content can be very marked. In this context, actors who are often little considered play a primordial role: they are private collectors, who have collected material often neglected by official institutions and possess an invaluable knowledge of their object. We present here, hoping to be useful for future research projects on these topics, the private archive of Enrique Fernández-Xesta, which represents one of the most important private collections of illustrated magazines in the world. We also men- tion here the difficulties of partnering with public institutions and the enrichment for the research community that would come from an official recognition of these collections. The access to this press material for researchers, which would allow a scientific analysis and an objective and pedagogical presentation on websites accompanying the reader, represents a historical as well as a public issue, at a time when the “unrestrained” diffusion of contents on the Internet enables important abuses in the utilisation of documents.