As far as looking for data entry people, I would agree to look at high 
school and college students.  Also check with any technical/vo-tech 
institutions in your area.  We've recently gotten an intern form such a 
place and she needed data entry experience for her degree there.

I would also say not to be afraid to ask your "retiree age" volunteers if 
they would like to learn data entry.  You might be surprised how many of 
them might want to learn how to use computers in that way.  We have one 
volunteer who is a retired engineer and she was very interested in learning 
data entry and has told us that she has used this skill outside of the 
museum since.

Heather Marie Wells

>From: Susan Gonzalez <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Museum discussion list <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: PastPerfect
>Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:42:42 -0500
>
>Hi,
>I've worked at two places with Pastperfect, I mostly search with the people
>and search terms field but often use keyword search as well. As for
>training, I think it is one of the easier programs to learn. You may want 
>to
>look into finding high school/university age volunteers ( I know here in
>Ontario High school kids need so many hours of volunteer work to graduate
>and it looks good on their college apps. Maybe you could get museum studies
>students as interns who are looking for some experience to work on it for a
>few months. Hope this helps some.
>Susan Gonzalez
>Archivist
>Holstein Canada
>Brantford, Ontario
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Shannon Lindridge [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 12:00 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: [MUSEUM-L] PastPerfect
>
>
>For those of you who are using PastPerfect out there, which of the
>research methods do you/your volunteers use the most?
>
>My dilemma, we converted from FileMakerPro to PastPerfect going on two
>years ago and the program is pretty much unusable do to the fact much of
>the information did not end up in the correct field, somewhat scattered.
>
>My plans were to have information entered into the people field and search
>terms field, by volunteers, and have our reference room volunteers, most
>are of retirement age, use the people field and search terms field for
>performing research request for our patrons in our research library.  I
>thought this would be the easiest method for our volunteers to access the
>information.
>
>I have been hesitant to teach our reference room volunteers the program
>for fear of them getting frustrated at not being able to find the
>information they are looking for.   I have thought of training them to do
>dataentry, but they are usually to busy to perform dataentry while working
>in the reference room.
>
>My other dilemma/difficulty has been finding volunteers who are willing to
>do dataentry.
>
>I would appreciate any guidance, suggestions anyone can give on training
>the "older generation" volunteer a new computer program, how to recruit
>volunteers to do dataentry, and as stated before what research method(s)
>most commonly used in PastPerfect.  I have also cross-posted this message
>at Pastime Software.
>
>--Shannon
>
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