Back in 1985 SJVIS launched an ambitious data entry project: a computerized index to our massive vertical file (current size: ten 5-drawer filing cabinets.) Prior to this, vertical file indexing had been handled with a card file. Converting the card index into electronic form permitted more thorough searching, and allowed us to produce and distribute extra copies of the database. The index was organized into three separate files: antiques, poems/songs/quotes, and general reference. This last file was named "Ben's Almanac" after the POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK published by Benjamin Franklin. Work on this index has been continuous; at present William Young devotes about ten hours per week to the project.
With the advent and rapid growth of the World Wide Web, the next logical step was to make this index available online. This was accomplished by Mike Drake, who converted the earlier dBaseIV filest to Microsoft Access format about three years ago.
Ben's Almanac isn't just an index -- portions can be thought of as an outdex since many entries in Ben's direct users to original contacts and sources. Unfortunately, the brief text-only format of the index doesn't do proper justice to some of the files in our office collection. We therefore recently added a parallel feature called "Ben's Files". The idea behind Ben's Files is to make the actual content of suitable portions of our vertical file available on the WWW. Check out the current files at the bottom of the Ben's Almanac search page: http://www.sjvls.org/sjvls/bens/
Dave DeLaurant, SJVIS