At the Creation: Chaos, Control, and Automation-Commercial Software Development for Archives

ONEDAY I ASKED A FRIEND who publishes in medical journals to describe an ideal computer system. Without hesitation he replied, “I’d like to sit in my study at home and do the following with a microcomputer: use my word processor; retrieve notes from an indexed database; transfer them right into my composition on the word processor; if necessary, dial u p an electronic database, search it, and download some data into my computer; and tonight by computer send what I’ve written to a friend in Boston who will read it and send his comments back to me by electronic mail so I can read them tomorrow morning.” What does my friend have in common with archivists and librarians? He generates most of his own data, rarely visits libraries, and never darkens the doors of archives; even so, this modern scholar shares a community with librarians and archivists. It is the information community. Today many people are doing what my friend wants to do in his study; not quite as easily and in one place, but soon they will. Those who use microcomputers compose articles with word processing software by entering information. They retrieve information from notes indexed and stored electronically. They enter information from these notes (that is, fields in their databases) into compositions. They search external databases and can download information from them into stand-alone microcomputers. They send information from one computer to another.