Demographic

Age: 17

Gender identity: Male

Race: Chinese

Indigenous: No

Class: Middle class

Other identity (e.g. linguistic, religious): N/A

Education: Currently in grade 12

Language: English, high-school French, some Cantonese

Personal responsibilities: Has part-time job, some evenings and weekends

Location: Born in Vancouver, family settled in Vancouver from China in early 20th century

Widgets: Tools & Platforms

• Transcription – From the Page, Scribe (2.0), Scripto
• Crowdsourcing – PyBosa, Hive, Text Thresher
• Flagging Harmful Language – Description-Audit
• IIIF – Mirador
• Visualization – Gist

Brief Biography

Roy Chong a high-school student who comes from a family whose roots are in China and Vancouver since the early 20th century. He didn’t grow up speaking Cantonese as his mother tongue, but knows a bit and wishes he was more proficient in it. He is working on a school project to investigate his family history and this has piqued his interest in history generally, but especially the experiences of Chinese and other immigrants in Vancouver. He doesn’t have any experience with archival systems or concepts and the few times he’s had a look, he finds them weird. He’s generally disappointed at how little is available online and frustrated at how difficult it is to access it. He hasn’t really thought about it, but would likely find it cool to conduct his own oral histories and share them publicly.

Character description

• Curious and open-minded
• Enjoys hearing people’s stories about the past
• Likes working on his own
• Doesn’t like asking for help
• Thinks systems should be easy so that he doesn’t have to ask for help. If he does have to, he might be put off from using them.

Interest in archives & Life experience

Why interested in archives: Roy is working on a class project to research his family roots.

Community affiliations: None

Represented in archives: No, but wants to know more about immigration experiences in Vancouver and wonders if his family members are “in the archives”

Professional affiliations: None

Access needs and mobility: No visible disabilities or impaired movement

Motivations

Why: Interest in history, spurred on by family’s own history.

Frustrations

Barriers: Roy finds it weird that “everything isn’t already online” and the few times he’s looked at archival finding aids online finds them fairly baffling. He found some descriptions, but was disappointed that they weren’t the records themselves and he was put off at the prospect of having to go physically to a repository to access them so he’s never visited an archives.

Info and Tech Access & Experience

Hardware: Has grown up with computers in the home

Software: Proficient with office software, Google, social media

Network connectivity: Has access to high-speed internet

Experience with archival tools: None

Experience with archival frameworks: None

Comfort with learning technology: High

Goals

What do they want to do: Roy is mainly using Google searches to find information and in this way he has come across some archival descriptions of records held by repositories. Beyond his own family, he’s become interested immigration experiences generally. Wants to find photos, interviews, and translations of community newspapers

What relationship do they want to the archives: He’d like someone to explain how archives work, he expected they would be like libraries, but he’s finding that is not the case. He might be interested in learning how to conduct oral histories himself and making them available to others