RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 9)

Comments continued
Equipment

• Recently purchased a computer – now need to decide what to do next
• Our computer is 7 years old – only Word Pad program
• Old computer & software – we have had help and guidelines, but not enough people
• Only two volunteers use the computer which is old
• Old group with no computers – I’ve just joined and am very interested in upgrading the society
• Group only uses computer for administration
• Need special equipment – large scanner
• Our major problems are training, organisation of equipment & fear of the unknown. Unfamiliar equipment is off-putting

 Finance

• Society has plans to purchase a computer, but no money for one
• Not much money, not many volunteers, no interest in computers by many

 Other

• Backlog of 50 years
• More time would be good
• Difficult to meet professional standards
• Computers used mainly for display and cataloguing
• No access to the internet
• Handful do large numbers of all the jobs about the place – we are slow oldies and too busy – upheavals and new people change things too much – struggling with images, all in fact

A success story

Our story is probably not unique among the Historical Society Network but a brief history of our computer usage might be appropriate at this time.

With the introduction of the RHSV Local History Database we made an application to the local council for a grant to cover hardware and the DB TextWorks software.

We were successful and purchased 4 second hand computers which were connected on a wireless network and now share a Society purchased photocopier as a network printer. Two of the PCs have local printers attached, two have A4 scanners attached and the Printer/Scanner/Fax is also shared on the wireless network.

Recently we have added another 2 PCs of similar specification and we now have 6 PCs on the network. All the PCs are Pentium 4 and run Windows XP and the Open Office suite of programs.

Over the last few years, using these PCs and software, we have been able to increase the quality and quantity of our publications. These range from a 12pp walk book to the most impressive, a very professional looking, 220pp A5, digitally printed paperback.

[This group now also has 3121 records in the Victorian Local History Database]

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 8)

Problems

• Time – 116
• Staff– 99
• Finance – 56
• Inadequate training – 47
• Inadequate equipment – 40
• Inadequate guidelines – 22
• Other* – 25 

 *Lack of interest, inadequate space and aging volunteers frequently cited

Comments
Availability of volunteers

• Limited number of volunteers
• Recruiting people to be involved or commit to projects is sometimes difficult
• Hard to find people interested in historical research – even their own properties
• Availability of data entry operators – age of membership
• Finding volunteers with appropriate skills
• Insufficient number of volunteers computer literate
• Limited time availability for those with limited skills
• We always need more suitably skilled volunteers
• Just commenced cataloguing project and currently training new volunteers
• Had heritage volunteers – great

Age of volunteers

• Age of membership mainly seniors – multiple community commitments
• Most of our twelve members are elderly
• Membership of 15 members, mostly elderly – secretary does all the computer work – membership numbers declining – four moved recently to aged care
• Majority of members past retirement age – most do not have computers or computer skills – those with computer skills, skills limited – many will not even turn on the computer to look at the database despite it being set up for easy access
•  Members in the 75+ age group – they have a go

Computer literacy

• Lack of interest in members learning how to use a computer
• People – not enough researchers or computer literate people
• Computer literate active members (lack thereof)
• Lack of volunteers – due to age find computers a challenge – don’t retain computer skills learnt
• Not many confident (computer) users in the older generation
• Only the secretary is computer literate plus webmaster

Building

• Inadequate space (3)
• Inadequate space – our space is storage – desperately need an office space area
• Room not big enough for more than three
• Facilities inadequate – cold! No plumbing, telephone, internet – but not enough people to warrant it?
• Difficulty of heating premises in winter
• Space / area needs upgrading & fitting out to be used – currently work is done off-site
• Society meets in neighbourhood house where no storage allowed
• Access to the building difficult at night

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 7)

Funding sources for IT projects

Purchase computer hardware from:
Society funds - 93
Council grants – 49
Other grants – 52
Fundraising – 38

Purchase computer software from:
Society funds – 89
Council grants – 31
Other grants – 40
Fundraising – 32

General running costs for computer projects from:
Society funds – 112
Council grants – 15
Other grants – 9
Fundraising – 40

Grants from other organisations included:

• FAHCSIA - Dept Families Housing Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
• Volunteer Small Equipment Grant
• Museums Australia (Victoria)- Building Better Museums
• PROV Local History Grants Program
• Bendigo Bank
• Esso
• Local op shop

A number of groups obtained second hand computers from other organisations.
One group purchased a computer using funds donated by local Councillor.

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 6)

Groups with their own email:
Yes – 76
No – 88

Groups tend to use web email services such as Hotmail / Live (11), gmail (10), Yahoo (3), dcsi (1).

Some use email provided by an Internet Service Provider including Optus (7), Bigpond (6), Australis (3), chariot (2), Vicnet (2) or a webhost portal such as Ausvic (1).

Some use email attached to the domain name of the organisation.

66 groups use the email of a member for society business.

20 groups did not indicate using email.

Members of groups with email
14 groups reported not knowing how many members had email addresses, though one reported that they were now collecting the information.

Data provided as numbers of members using email

Some groups however reported a high percentage of members using email.
Other figures provided were one group each with 60, 65, 70 and 90 members using email, 3 with 100 members and one with 220.

Some groups provided information as number of members – other groups provided information as percentage of membership.

Data provided as percentage of membership

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 5)

Websites

Groups with their own website
Yes – 92
No – 71

Website hosting:

• Vicnet sites – 37
• Sites with own domain name (some of these possibly hosted on Vicnet) – 34
• Attached to websites of another organisations – 7
• Part of website of parent body – 4
• My Connected Community sites – 4
• Blogs as websites – 3 (Blogger and Wordpress)
• Community guide websites (2)
• Spaces.live.com – 2
• Google sites (1)
• 50webs (1)

Groups with webpage on another site

Yes – 27
No – 52

21 groups reported having a page on website of another organisation but did not have their own website

Help for website development
Help requested to develop a website: 18
Help requested to maintain a website: 16

54 of the respondents without websites of their own did not request help to establish or create a website.
33 of these respondents indicated that they did not have a presence on any website.

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 4)

Backing up computers

Frequency of backing up databases (and other computer files)

Backing up recent records:
Each time computer used – 44
Weekly – 27
Monthly –33
Other – 12

Backing up complete database:

Each time computer used – 24
Weekly – 15
Monthly – 49
Other – 26

How many copies of the back-up files are saved?

• 1 copy – 42
• 2 copies – 38
• 3 copies – 10
• 4 copies – 1

At least 2 (1), up to 4 (1), some, 10 (1)

Are back-up copies stored off site?

• 107 groups answered Yes
• 22 groups answered No

Selection of comments about backing up:

• quarterly / every few months(4)
• every 6 months (2)
• regularly
• irregularly (3)
• never back up computer (2)
• occasionally / ad hoc (2)
• depends how many entries are entered
• various times
• not often
• intermittent
• rather haphazard
• back-up plan being implemented (3)
• not done yet!

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 3)

Cataloguing programs used

• Inmagic DB/TextWorks – 66
• Excel – 37 *
• Filemaker Pro – 18
• Access – 18
• Collections Mosaic – 6
• Heritage V – 5
• Microsoft Works – 5

Not using computers for cataloguing – 16
Other** – 15

Multiple responses to this question

*
13 groups reported using only Excel for collections management.

Excel was also used by groups using Inmagic DB/TextWorks (10), Access (10), Filemaker Pro (3), Collections Mosaic (2) and Microsoft Works (2)

**

• Specially designed / in-house database – 5
• Records directly added to library catalogue / database – 2
• Tellico (Linux), Tabularium, eLibrary, Bookmark, Copernic and Tribute were other programs mentioned

Type of items in computer catalogue

• Photographs – 125
• Books – 106
• Documents – 103
• Maps – 73
• Artifacts – 72
• Ephemera – 70
• Audio tapes – 53
• Videotapes – 49

132 groups answered this question

Catalogue records made available to the public

• Staff searching for researchers at the society – 125
• Researchers using a read-only database at the society – 47
• Researchers using a read-only version of the database at a library or another location – 4
• Local history database available on the Internet – 25

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 2)

Use of computers at societies

• Cataloguing – 126
• Administration – 109
• Indexing projects – 92
• Newsletters and other publications – 90
• Internet access – 59

 35% of responding societies have Internet access at the society

 

24 metropolitan and state-wide groups (14% of total respondents or 50% of metropolitan and state-wide responding groups)
35 regional groups (21% of total respondents or 30% of regional respondents)

 

Use of computers - members' computers

• Internet access – 128
• Administration – 125
• Newsletters and other publications – 115
• Indexing projects – 53
• Cataloguing – 47

 Five groups listed scanning images at home as another activity

 

Typed of items scanned

• Photographs – 122
• Slides / negatives – 57
• Documents – using OCR – 81

 Not all groups scanning documents use OCR

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010

This series of blogs will contain information on how organisations affiliated with the Royal Historical Society of Victoria are using information technology in 2010. The final report will include a comparison with the results from a similar survey undertaken in 2003.

In April 2010 a questionnaire on how societies / groups affiliated with the RHSV use technology was sent to all affiliated societies.
In July reminder emails were sent to groups who had not returned the questionnaire.
By 3 August, 165 completed surveys had been returned.

Break down of surveys

Societies were asked whether or not they owned a computer
144 of the responding societies own at least one computer
6 are planning to purchase computers
15 have no plans to purchase a computer

Reasons for not having a computer include:

• Use computers of another organisation (7)
• Do not have a collection or use collection in local library (4)
• Nowhere to store collection – stored at a member’s house
• No headquarters for organisation – meet in members’ homes
• Office bearers / members use own computers
• Members not interested
• Insufficient finance

Computer hardware owned by societies

Computers

• Desktop – 134
• Laptop – 56
• Both – 46

Printers

• Inkjet – 110
• Laser – 62
• Both – 37
• Printer-scanner – 3
• No printer – 9

Scanners
128 respondents said they had a scanner at the society

 CD-ROM / DVD burner

110 respondents reported having a CD-ROM burner and or DVD burner

 Back-up devices

• External hard-drives – 71
• CD-ROM / DVD burner – 69
• USB drives (memory drives, flash drives) – 64
• Floppy disks – 28

A combination of backing up devices often reported being used