Automating the Archives: a Case Study

364 American Archivist / Vol. 57 / Spring 1994 Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/57/2/364/2748641/aarc_57_2_9p4t712558174274.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 Automating the Archives: A Case Study CAROLE PRIETTO Abstract: The establishment of an archival automation program requires that the archivist address issues of both a technical and a managerial nature. These issues include needs assessment, selection of hardware and software to meet identified needs, redesigning archival tasks in light of the system selected, and ongoing maintenance of the system selected. The present article discusses the issues Washington University Archives staff members faced in developing an automation program and the solutions they adopted. It concludes with a brief discussion of possible future directions for the automation program. About the author: Carole Prietto holds a B.A. in history from the University of California at Santa Barbara and an M.A. in history from UCLA. From 1986 to 1989 she was the assistant in the UCLA University Archives; since 1990, she has been university archivist at Washington University, St. Louis. Automating the Archives: A Case Study 365 MUCH DISCUSSION IN THE LITERATURE Washington University Archives. This pro- about archival automation concerns imple- cess consisted of a number of steps over a mentation of the USMARC AMC format three-year period: evaluating the existing and development of national descriptive hardware and software, selecting a new da- 1 4 standards. This discussion is both useful tabase management package, installing Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/57/2/364/2748641/aarc_57_2_9p4t712558174274.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 and necessary, but it examines only one and setting up the new software and train- side of the automation issues archivists ing staff in its use, adding OCLC and NO- face. Without physical and intellectual con- TIS access to facilitate MARC-AMC trol over collections, MARC records can- cataloging, and, finally, adding our first not be created and collections cannot be MARC AMC records to a national biblio- used. Discussions of the application of per- graphic database. The discussion will con- sonal computers and commercial software clude with an outline of some possible packages to archival processing tasks are future directions for our automation pro- scarce. A search of the American Archivist gram. and Archival Issues (formerly the Mid- western Archivist) going back to 1980 re- The Beginning of Special Collections vealed only two such articles. In a 1990 Automation article in the Midwestern Archivist,2 Ri- chard J. Hite and Daniel Linke outlined the The Washington University Special Col- use of a personal computer and Word- lections Department purchased its first per- Perfect in a team approach to processing at sonal computers in 1988, two years before the Western Reserve Historical Society. In my arrival. At that time, the department's a 1991 American Archivist article,3 James hardware consisted of four IBM-compati- G. Carson outlined his repository's use of ble computers and two printers. The prin- WordPerfect and Minaret. ters were shared by way of a local area network and a network program, LANtas- Even more scarce are discussions of the tic. WordPerfect was chosen for word- decision-making process that results in the processing needs. In addition, a database implementation of an automation program. management software package was needed My purpose here is to discuss the imple- for archives and manuscripts processing. mentation of the automation program at the The program chosen was Marcon, then manufactured by AIRS, Incorporated. My predecessor did not make automa- 'For discussion of the MARC AMC format and the development of descriptive standards, see especially tion a high priority, and the personal com- the papers of the Working Group on Archival De- puter in University Archives, when it was scription, reprinted in the American Archivist 52 (Summer 1989) and 53 (Winter 1990), with extensive used at all, was used for correspondence. bibliography; and David Bearman, ed., Toward Na- Item-level finding aids, accession registers, tional Information Systems for Archives and Manu- and statistics were prepared, as they always script Repositories: The National Information Systems Task Force (NISTF) Papers, 1981-1984 (Chicago: had been, on a typewriter. The result was Society of American Archivists, 1987). Anne J. Gil- a small archives staff overburdened with liland, ed., "Automating Intellectual Access to Ar- clerical tasks while facing both a large chives," Library Trends 36 (Winter 1988) is devoted entirely to microcomputer applications in an archival backlog and a heavy reader services load. setting, as is American Archivist 47 (Summer 1984). Soon after my arrival in 1990, it became 2"Teaming Up with Technology: Team Process- ing," Midwestern Archivist 15, no. 2 (1990): 91-98. 3"The American Medical Association's Historical Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection: "The commercial database management packages An Integrated Approach to Automated Collection discussed here are trademarks of their respective man- Management," American Archivist 54 (Spring 1991): ufacturers. The author has no connection with any of 184-91. the manufacturers whose products are discussed here. 366 American Archivist / Spring 1994 apparent that the time had come to take a could easily be updated as more informa- critical look at archives procedures, with an tion was added to the database. eye toward streamlining them. Automation Unfortunately, Marcon had a number of offered a means to do this. We had the drawbacks. The first I noticed was that the computers and the software; what we now program's processing speed slowed dra- Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/57/2/364/2748641/aarc_57_2_9p4t712558174274.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 needed was a plan to exploit our personal matically after we entered one collection of computer's capabilities to the fullest. approximately a thousand records. Over Needs assessment came first: what activ- time, thousands of records would be en- ities should be automated? The activities tered into the database, and I did not want best suited for automation were those fre- a program that would be bogged down by quent and repetitive in nature, heavily pa- the presence of large files. We also discov- per-based, and involving a great deal of ered other problems. Printed reports—an word processing. In examining our opera- important component because the program tions, we found the activity that best fit the would have to produce not only finding above criteria was the creation of archival aids but also the results of on-line and manuscript finding aids. Once we de- searches—were difficult to set up and dif- cided what to automate, we had both the ficult to modify. The data structure could tools (personal computers and software) not be modified except by completely eras- and a clear sense of what we wanted to ing the file and reentering the data. For no accomplish. apparent reason, indexes became corrupt, Before any further progress could be re- and on several occasions hundreds of re- alized, I had to learn to use Marcon Plus, cords were lost. the database package I had inherited, and Because of these problems, I proposed then train the archives staff in its use. My dBASE III+ for archives use. Concerns strategy for learning Marcon was to find a were raised about dBASE's lack of com- test collection, design a database structure patibility with the MARC format and the for that collection, enter data into Marcon, feasibility of having two database manage- and generate a finding aid. These steps ment systems within Special Collections. I would provide the training I needed, which was assigned to investigate database man- I could then pass on to the staff. The da- agement systems used in archival and man- tabase file and finding aid that resulted uscript repositories and make recommen- could be used to evaluate Marcon's index- dations to the library. The head of Special ing, searching, and reporting capabilities. Collections and associate dean for Collec- The test collection was a group of au- tions and Services gave me permission to diotapes documenting Washington Univ- use dBASE on a trial basis, pending the ersity's ongoing lecture program, the outcome of my investigation. Assembly Series. The Assembly Series was an ideal test collection because of its Investigating the Options size (about 1,000 tapes) and the need to The investigation of database manage- increase the number of access points to the ment programs began in February 1990. collection. The only finding aid available The first step was ascertaining what pro- for the collection was a typed list of the grams were used in archival repositories. lectures in rough chronological order; To find out, I queried archival colleagues cross-indexes by speaker's name, lecture ti- in the St. Louis area. At this beginning tle, or sponsoring organization did not stage, I was interested only in basic infor- exist. Putting this information into a data- mation: what programs were used, who the base structure would enable us to generate manufacturers were, how much the pro- these cross-indexes easily. These indexes grams cost, and strengths and weaknesses Automating the Archives: A Case Study 367 of the respective systems. Follow-up con- the program, the extent to which the tacts were

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