Pas encore de mots-clés.
This is an essay based on materials that I have discovered during a field visit in the archives of the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in 2018. It is a spectacular archive, although due to faulty conservation techniques in the past and the lack of space in the present, parts of the archives get irreversibly damaged before they can be digitised. Below is a reflection about the role of these archives, which I feel has gained more relevance for me recently through my experience in the University of Edinburgh's summer school organised in the Centre for Research Collections where I hqd the opportunity to visit other archives and learn more abaout conservation techniques and digitisation.
This field visit in Paris was a wonderful experience and the UNESCO Headquarter has a historic value in itself and hosts many artworks.
Preservation and Sharing of Knowledge and Information The perception of information and data has changed through the new technologies of archiving, digitalising and reproduction of the so-called ‘mediaobject.’ In this understanding of ‘data’, the media object itself is not data: it is the place, the time of creation, the content, the condition and other factors about the media object that give us information about the context in which the media object was produced and preserved (Stockinger, 2014: 1). The media object, such as in the case of this essay, the photographs about libraries and UNESCO publications are in itself valuable as information, and their context provides further knowledge which is necessary to analyse these photographs. The display and organisation in which these photographs were preserved have the power to contextualise and redefine the meaning which can be extracted from these photographs. All of the photographs analysed in this essay originate from the ‘Education’ section of the UNESCO photograph archives, highlighting the vital role that libraries and publications play in education and therefore valuable to be preserved. The photographs which were chosen to be analysed in this essay show the condition in which libraries and archives were after the Second World War and what kind of publications were preserved through the efforts of UNESCO commissioned photographers. Other photographs show the kind of publications and how they promote diversity and the universal right to knowledge for all. In this essay, four UNESCO commissioned photographs will be analysed: two photographs depicting a ruined library in France after the Second World War in 1951, one photograph showing a UNESCO poster from 1962 and a photograph of a person reading the UNESCO Braille review in 1976 will be used as sources in this paper. The photograph about a blind person reading the UNESCO Braille Review in 1976 shows the effort done by the UNESCO publications to reach the widest possible audience. After the war, many soldiers have lost their sight, informs us the description on the back of the photograph. The Braille Review is published in three languages and is a free publication, which indicates that its main goal is to transmit knowledge and information which transcends the vulnerabilities that people live with. The person reading the publication is supposedly an elderly person and his or her hands in the photograph are representative of the generation that stillsuffered the causes of the Second World War in the seventies. Applying a literary reading to this photograph, we can argue that the hands of the photograph are a synecdoche where a part of the body refers to the whole person to whom that part belongs. Therefore, even though the photograph does not show the face of the person who reads the review, or any face with which the spectator of the photograph could identify, the elderly hands represent an entire generation in this photograph, showing the universal problem of lack of information for handicapped persons in society as well as the importance of spreading information to all parts of the population.
This photograph includes contextual information which helps to interpretit in its time and situation. The so-called meta data in the back of the photograph provides the spectator with contextual knowledge and the photographs position in the archives gives a further layer of meaning to this photograph. However, we do not know for which purpose exactly this picture was taken, therefore alongside the factual information provided on the back of the photograph - date, the origins of the Braille Review -, the meaning of the data is also based on the spectator’s personal interpretation and perception of the image at hand. In the digital shoft which we are experiencing, a shift in the ways in which information and data is perceived had taken place due to an abundance of information through digitalisation which also deconstruct the definition of data hitherto.
Institutions such as the UNESCO promote the concept of the so-called ‘knowledge society’, rather than that of an ‘information society’. UNESCO recognizes four main aspects which contribute to the creation of knowledge societies: ‘freedom of expression, universal access to information and knowledge, respect for cultural and linguistic diversity, and quality education for all.’ The photograph about the UNESCO Braille Review underlines the importance of diversity and the right to information in every age and despite potential handicaps. The difference between the two aforementioned approaches about the role of data and information in a societal context is that a ‘knowledge society’ focuses on the use, appropriation and quality of the information available, whereas the concept of an ‘information society’ represents and highlights the importance of accumulating and accessing information but not the processing of it in particular. Thus the concept of ‘information society’ can be seen as a step towards ‘knowledge societies’. The notion of ‘knowledge society’ was developed by the UNESCO which also developed four pillars to this approach: ‘knowledge creation, knowledge preservation, knowledge dissemination and knowledge utilization.’
The effort of the UNESCO in the preservation of knowledge is recognizable in the photographs which depict the Bibliothèque Municipale of Valogne in 1951. Two photographs show the ruined state of the library in the post-war times and they highlight the damage that the wa has caused in terms of books and other sources of knowledge. Bombs have destroyed libraries and archives which contained hundreds of years old manuscripts, is the message which the spectator can extract from the photograph which shows how a librarian carries and stacks ancient books. There are old books are not preserved in the appropriate way due to lack of funds and material after the war. This causes a considerable loss of information through the destruction of libraries. The photographs depicting this situation are taken in the pre-digitalisation era, thus the physical object was one of the only ways to preserve the information that the mediaobject continued.
While archives can still have records about these media objects and their supposed existence, the physical object is often the victim of destruction, inappropriate preservation methods and the reorganisation of archives according to a system which is not transparent enough. The photograph where the librarian carries the heavy and ancient books gives yet another message about the importance of information and knowledge. Due to the perspective in which this image was taken and due to the use of the stacks of books as the frame for the image, the person looks small compared to the books which surround him. This can be interpreted as a conscious choice of the photographer commissioned by the UNESCO to depict the smallness of the individual compared to the abundance of knowledge that exists and thus this photograph highlights the importance of access to knowledge, which is one of the pillar goals of the UNESCO. The considerable loss of material in libraries and the destruction of libraries is documented the UNESCO publication Bibliothèques en détresse in 1949. This book is a report about the material loss in terms of books and libraries after the Second World War. In the northern part of France, where Valognes is located too, libraries have suffered losses of up to 110 000 volumes in Douai and cities such as Strasbourg have lost approximately 300 000 volumes. The photographs which show the destroyed state of the municipal library of Valogne documents and gives evidence about the state of libraries after the war, thus it informs private people but also institutions about the need to invest in the reconstruction and preservation of precious books in libraries as those are an important source of knowledge for the population. UNESCO promotes greatly the sharing and processing of knowledge and the preservation of the so-called ‘world’s legacy of knowledge’ for the future generations. The data which we accessed in the archives of the UNESCO shows evidence that sharing is a main concern of the UNESCO: not only the sharing of knowledge, but also the sharing of values, such as that of equality.
In the photograph, which depicts a poster that was submitted to an international UNESCO poster competition in 1962, the message is very clear. This poster shows in a simplistic manner, with the use of simple stickfigures that all humans are equal. This message relates to one of the UNESCO’s main objectives which is ‘learning to live together.’ This objective recognizes the growing diversity in the world and the need to accept and understand these diverse communities. In this objective too, knowledge plays an important role: the more knowledge one has about a different country, the more likely it is that this person understands the given culture. The goal of this objective is to create a ‘global community’, with universal values and human rights in the midst ofdiversity. The ingenuity of this poster is in the use of the stick figures: they clearly represent human beings, however these have no gender, colour, age or any other attribute which could distinguish them. Therefore, the spectator can identify with these stick figures, as they represent a universal image of the human being. This representation of people is simple and nearly child-like and the background of the poster reminds the spectator of an ancient stone wall. Thus one could interpret this poster as depicting an ancient, ‘primitive’ painting from one of the UNESCO world heritage sites where these stick figures are drawn on a stone wall; the sign of mathematical equality is added to this image, a sign that most communities in the world recognize as the one representing equality. This poster uses universal representations and herefore no language (other than the mathematical language, which is universal), no slogan or words are needed to share the message with the spectator. A spectator of any age or of any level of education will understand the overall message of this poster due to its simple and clear message and the universal representations in it. To conclude, this essay has shown how the UNESCO promotes the sharing and preserving of knowledge through different initiatives. Firstly, the photograph of an elderly person reading the UNESCO Braille Review shows that knowledge can be shared in different ways and that everybody, no matter what age or despite their physical condition is entitled and has the right to information which provides them with knowledge. Secondly, the photographs depicting the disastrous situation of libraries after the Second World War draw attention to the importance of preservation of knowledge through the appropriate techniques and material. Thirdly, the poster for the UNESCO international poster competition shows how UNESCO publications and posters use and prioritize universal signs as they convey universal messages which should be true all over the world, such as equality. Through these posters, which people of any age or level of education (even those not able to read) will most probably be able to understand and identify with. Thus we can conclude that UNESCO publication and the photographs commissioned by the UNESCO promote the sharing and preservation of data objects and information as these are necessary materials to share knowledge in the world and to preserve the ‘legacy of knowledge ’wich archives and libraries seek to collect and share. Bibliography
‘Building Knowledge Societies’, UNESCO <https://en.unesco.org/themes/building-knowledge-societies> [accessed 28.06.2018].
‘Information Preservation’, UNESCO <https://en.unesco.org/themes/information-preservation> [accessed 28.06.2018].
‘Learning to Live Together’, UNESCO <https://en.unesco.org/themes/learning-live-together> [accessed 28.06.2018].
Stockinger, P., The ‘Semiotic Turn’ in Digital Archives and Libraries (ESCoM, 2014).
‘Synecdoche’ in Oxford English Dictionary (University of Pennsylvania, 1998).
van der Hoeven, Hans, van Albada, Joana, UNESCO,Memory of the World: Lost Memory Libraries and Archives Destroyed intheTwentiethCentury(Paris:UNESCO,1996),p.13.
UNU-EGOV and UNESCO-IFAP, ‘Information and Knowledge Societies’ in Knowledge Societies Policy Platform Handbook (2016) <http://www.unksoc.org/index.php/handbook/background/knowledge-societies/informa tion-and-knowledge-societies/> [accessed 28.06.2018].
***All photographs are my own***
