In this paper, the FAETHON project is presented, whose overall objective is to develop an integrated information system that offers enhanced search and retrieval capabilities to users of heterogeneous digital audiovisual (a/v) archives. This novel system will exploit the advances in handling a/v content and related metadata, as introduced by MPEG-4 and worked out by MPEG-7, to offer advanced access services characterized by the tri-fold 'semantic phrasing of the request (query)', 'unified handling' and 'personalized response'.