I agree in general principle with Susan Harless that there is a great deal of
information in museums and archives and libraries and with the explosion of
information access technology, these should be accessible.
 
However, the managerial trend of "downsizing" or "rightsizing" (a cover-your-a*
* ephemism) has affected museums, archives, and libraries as well.  I can tick
off literally dozens of information collections or resources that either should
be indexed or typed in to the computer so the electronic information is availa-
ble....but I have no staff to do this.   Indeed many of our users chide us for
spending too much time in front of the computer; other users are outraged to
discover (after they've printed their family history book) that we did indeed
have additional important information....which simply was unlocatable at the
time of their visit.
 
One time saver that we have used in compiling electronic databases has been the
inclusion of in-house abbreviations to make entry easier....but sharing these
with the users have been frustrating because an entry like:
 
1994.43.3  A W Carv attrb J Smith   Pres:y  Stor:131B  S:15x14i
 
makes sense to us, but for a user would need to be retranslated as:
 
Accession 1994  Collection 43  Item 3    Artifact.  Wood Carving attributed to
John Smith.   The "y" in Pres means it has undergone preservation treatment and
a report is on file in the Preservation File.  It is stored at location 131B
and is 15 inches high and 14 inches wide.
 
Note:  this is a made up example, but I cite it to show one of the difficulties
in moving internal databases to public use, if there IS an internal database.
One of our collections at present consists of 30 feet of 3x5 slips, a massive
index to another group of materials (100,000 documents at least).  We have no
way to translate these to electronic medium (though I've thought of scanning)
....It would be great to have these as an electronic database and available but
given budget austerities and staff reductions, I don't see it happening.
 
 
Dean DeBolt, University Librarian
Special Collections and West Florida Archives
University of West Florida