Monday, January 03, 2005

Marginal References

Tomorrow we will re-start our "marginal reference project". This project's ultimate goal is to electronically capture every marginal references in our record books. Sounds like a massive undertaking? Yes, it is. And it is tedious. Here's the process. An employee flips through a record book page-by-page searching for references. When a refernece is found the employee enters it into an Access Database. When the project is completed all the information will be converted and transfered to our ACS computer system. At that point the public will have access both from the Internet and at the registry. It is a very time consuming, but essential project. Last summer we completed the first phase of the "marginal reference" project. It dealt with book 4216 (September 1987) to book 2179 (December 1976). September 1987 is the year the Wang Computer System was installed in Middlesex North and 1976 is the last year of our computer indexes. The goal of the project's second phase is book 1135 (1950), where our images stop. Both Wang and our present ACS Computer system allow an employee to enter marginal references at the time of recording. The projects value is tremendous. Marginal references must be available eletronically before the next generation of registries can arrive.

No comments: