In a Perfect World: Exploring the Desires and Realities for Digitized Historical Image Archives

The primary goal of this paper is to explore users' desires for digitized historical image collections, examining their desires based on different use purposes and information interaction activities. In addition, we investigate the image attributes that users wish to search from the collection. To accomplish this, we conducted 21 qualitative interviews with active users of a digitized historical photograph archive. Our findings suggest that users' desires relate to three contexts: tools, collection, and socio-organizational issues. Moreover, our results indicate that users require support for various information interaction activities, not just searching. We found that users' desires vary based on their specific use purposes, and that users prioritize conceptual access points that can already mostly be generated through automated annotation methods. Ultimately, this study contributes to a better understanding of users' real-life image needs and offers implications for improving access to digital image collections.