Polyvocal Interpretations of Contested Colonial Heritage PICCH

The PICCH project was an international, interdisciplinary research project aimed at understanding audiovisual material of colonial origin in European archives. The project was funded by the national research councils of each of the participating research groups’ countries, i.e. Norway, Portugal, the Netherlands, France and Great Britain. The project had three archives as co-partners: the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, the French Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA), and the film and photo collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK. The project’s point of departure was the history of the three European nations as colonial powers (the Netherlands, France and Great Britain). As a consequence, many audiovisual objects in these three countries’ archives contain visual and linguistic representations that perpetuate colonial ideologies, use outdated or offensive terms and perspectives, or are otherwise problematic when seen through modern critical frameworks. The research project's overall ambition was to open a dialogue between the archives and the users. The research group at OsloMet had the task of elucidating who the users are, what information needs they have, what search strategies they use, and the reasons for their success and failure. Data was collected via questionnaires and interviews. Questionnaire data was collected to gain an understanding of who the users of the archives are, how familiar they are with the content, and what content they are looking for. The purpose of the interviews was to gain an understanding of how users search the archives and what challenges they experience. This included identifying what information needs and search strategies they have and what makes their information search successful or unsuccessful. The questionnaire results show that the archive users mainly have an academic background, for example as historians, archivists, university lecturers and students. Furthermore, the majority of respondents had some or a lot of knowledge of the archives. We interviewed academic archive users (researchers and archivists), who all showed high competence, in terms of domain knowledge as well as archival intelligence and artefactual competence. The users' information needs are complex and are often characterized by consisting of several facets. From the questionnaire data, we identified four main facets: subject, place, time and media type. In addition, 'person' was used as a search facet. The findings were supported by the interviews, and we noticed the importance of personal names and geographical locations as search terms. Our results nuance the findings of how archives are searched, we give examples of many diverse information needs from the questionnaires and the interviews. The examples illustrate the need for more descriptive metadata at the unit level. The interview subjects' information needs correspond to Ingwersen's three types of information needs: verificative, conscious topical, and muddled topical information needs.PICCH项目是一项国际性跨学科研究项目，旨在研究欧洲档案馆中殖民时期来源的视听资料。该项目由参与研究团队所在国的国家研究委员会资助，参与国包括挪威、葡萄牙、荷兰、法国与英国。项目的三家合作伙伴档案馆分别为：荷兰声像研究所、法国国家视听研究院（INA），以及英国牛津大学皮特·里弗斯博物馆的影视与照片藏品。 该项目的出发点是荷兰、法国与英国这三个欧洲国家作为殖民列强的历史。因此，这三个国家档案馆中的诸多视听藏品，其视觉与语言表述往往延续殖民意识形态、使用过时或冒犯性的措辞与视角，或在现代批判性审视框架下存在其他问题。本研究项目的整体目标是搭建档案馆与用户之间的对话桥梁。奥斯陆城市大学（OsloMet）的研究团队负责厘清用户群体构成、用户的信息需求、所采用的检索策略，以及检索成败的成因。 研究数据通过问卷与访谈两种方式采集。问卷数据用于了解档案馆用户的身份、对馆藏内容的熟悉程度，以及其检索的目标内容；访谈则旨在探究用户的档案馆检索流程与遭遇的各类挑战，这包括明确用户的信息需求与检索策略，以及影响其检索成败的关键因素。问卷结果显示，档案馆用户多具备学术背景，例如历史学家、档案管理员、高校讲师与学生。此外，多数受访者对该档案馆馆藏具备一定或丰富的了解。本次访谈的对象为学术类档案馆用户（研究人员与档案管理员），他们在专业领域知识、档案情报能力与藏品处理能力方面均展现出较高素养。 用户的信息需求复杂多元，通常包含多个维度。基于问卷数据，我们归纳出四大核心维度：主题、地点、时间与媒体类型，此外还将“人物”作为一项检索维度。访谈结果验证了上述发现，同时我们也注意到，个人姓名与地理位置作为检索词的重要性。本研究结果细化了现有关于档案馆检索方式的研究结论，我们通过问卷与访谈案例展现了多样的信息需求类型。这些案例表明，藏品单元层面需要更完善的描述性元数据。访谈对象的信息需求可归为英沃森（Ingwersen）提出的三类信息需求：验证型、明确主题型与模糊主题型信息需求。