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THE HISTORY COMPUTERIZATION PROJECT
To Build a Regional History Information Network
The History Computerization Project of the Regional History Center
of the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles City
Historical Society is building a Regional History Information
Network for the exchange of information between historians,
librarians, archivists, museum curators, preservation groups, and
historical societies who share a common subject interest. The
participating organizations will contribute copies of their records
to a Regional Union Catalog for Southern California History,
available for searching at the Regional History Center or over
telephone lines by a computer attached to a modem.
The project has created a database of more than 6,000 entries
representing more than 3,000 historical organizations and
repositories in California. In many cases the database also
identifies the individuals in each organization who have the
greatest interest in participating in a computer network. Entries
for repositories include the historical subjects represented by the
collections and the hours of operation. The database of
repositories can be employed to provide a reference service to
researchers. For example, one can do a search for all of the
repositories with information on the author Jack London, and sort
the search by zip code to find the repository closest to the
researcher's location.
The Los Angeles City Historical Society is using the same system to
update a massive bibliography of the city published twenty years
ago. The bibliography will be available in both printed and
computer form in the Spring of 1994.
We believe that the exchange of historical information between
organizations and researchers will follow the pattern of computer
bulletin boards, organized on a voluntary basis by those who share
a strong interest in a particular subject. Local and national
interests will overlap. For example, both the Southern California
Jewish Historical Society and Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel are
about to begin participation in our project. Their immediate desire
is to share information with each other and with other local
organizations. But ultimately they will also want to communicate
with repositories possessing materials on Jewish history on a
national or international scale. The same will hold true for the
Santa Barbara Mission, which has joined the project, and which will
eventually want to exchange information with other missions.
The History Computerization Project is intended to serve as a pilot
program for other local and regional historical organizations with
similar objectives. The project has realistically faced the
situation in which most historical organizations find themselves,
and has therefore devised solutions with the intention of providing
the easiest and the least expensive avenue possible at the present
time. The plans made with regard to computer hardware, computer
software, the training of staff and volunteers, and the sharing of
data from many organizations through a regional history database,
have all been propelled by the basic desire to bring the benefits
of computer database management and standardized cataloging
practice as far down as possible on the cost and experience
spectrum.
Free Workshops
The History Computerization Project is now conducting free, one-day
workshops for beginners featuring hands-on training in the use of
computer database management for historical cataloging and
research. No prior computer experience or skilled typing ability is
required. The workshops give historical researchers and
organizations a chance to see how easy it can be to build an
historical database, at no cost or obligation.
At the workshops, each student works with historical materials
pertaining to his or her area of subject knowledge, drawn from the
USC collections. We have found great advantages in tapping the
knowledge possessed by historical society volunteers, when that
knowledge is combined with national cataloging standards and the
facilities of computer database management. For example, a recent
workshop focused on the Los Angeles Harbor, for two historical
societies located in that area. Only two of the twelve attending
had ever used a computer before. By the end of the day they were
all cataloging successfully. Most importantly, because they knew
the harbor area thoroughly, they were able to contribute
information which we would not have had otherwise.
Another workshop had as its focus maritime history. When I look at
a photo of sailing ship, I know that it's a ship, but not much
more. For those attending however, the ship was a "brigantine," a
"schooner," or another specific type. We are currently trying to
bring in members of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern
California, to read the Chinese characters in the background of the
photographs of the Los Angeles Chinatown.
The experience of conducting the workshops has been invaluable in
learning how to extend computerization to those who are not already
computer literate. After the first workshops we changed the screen
messages, to assure the novice cataloger that his or her work had
been saved properly. The result was that the workshop cataloging
rate tripled, to the creation of 200-300 records per workshop.
After each workshop, computer database utilities are used to make
corrections to the records, to bring them into conformance with
national cataloging standards. The database utilities will correct
hundreds of records in one pass, it is not necessary to edit each
record individually. As a result we have been able to justify the
cost of conducting the workshops by the amount of cataloging
produced alone.
Computer Classroom
At the Regional History Center of the University of Southern
California we have set up a computer classroom with ten
workstations for the History Computerization Project. In the
computer classroom we teach one-day workshops free of charge to
representatives of the local historical organizations.
In the classroom we employ the History Database program for
cataloging. The main computer employed is a medium-grade IBM PC
compatible. (It is an Everex 80386, running at a speed of 25
Megahertz, with four megabytes of memory, and a 160 Megabyte hard
disk.) That is where the database resides. Vintage IBM PCs, without
hard disks, were rescued from a warehouse and pressed into service
as terminals connected to the main computer. All ten computers are
connected to the database at the same time.
The system ensures that users do not collide. For example, two
novice catalogers cannot accidentally assign duplicate Record-IDs.
The IDs are assigned by the system.
Publicity through a Network of Historical Organizations
As mentioned above, our project is a joint project of USC and the
Los Angeles City Historical Society. It is through the historical
society connection that the project generates publicity and draws
in participants.
The board members of the Los Angeles society include past and
present officers of the Associated Historical Societies of Los
Angeles County, the Conference of California Historical Societies,
the Los Angeles Conservancy, and many organizations. Through these
connections we have access to all of the historical society
newsletters for publicity.
We encourage the individual societies to organize their interested
members to come in for a special workshop, specific to that
society's subject interest. That is how the Harbor Day workshop,
the Maritime Day workshop, and many others came about. This method
shifts the burden of organization and publicity from us to the
society.
The response that we have received confirms our belief that there
were many in the historical organizations who wanted to computerize
their collections, but who simply did not know where to start. When
we had an Open House inaugurating the project, over two hundred
people came.
For More Information
For more information on the History Computerization Project and a
free copy of the 80-page workshop tutorial, please contact:
David L. Clark
History Computerization Project
24851 Piuma Road
Malibu, California 90265
(818) HISTORY, (818) 591-9371
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