SiteMap
 USMS History & Archives Committee

Our Plan Before the RFP

This is a menu of the topics on this page (click on any):

This plan was begun in the beginning of our hoped for relationship with the Henning Library of the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Since contractual agreements and funding have not proceeded after they were approved by the House of Delegates, this plan has not been carried forward. It will be resumed when that relationship is supported by a contract.

Our Mission & Strategy

Debbie & Cav Cavanaugh & I had an excellent meeting with Preston & Rita Levi on 9/12/00. Preston and Rita is are staff to the Henning Library at ISHOF. They are highly qualified/trained archivists and are responsible for the archives of many dozens of organizations including FINA. Here's a brief report on our meeting:

Scope

 At some point, we may need to limit the scope of what is in our "archives" and "data". But starting out we won't try to define limits. Club newsletters were identified as the sort of item that someday we might say are not within the scope of USMS archives.

Resources

Preston said the term "archive" usually refers to paper materials of the sort that "record the history of the organization". He said the term "data" refers to swimming results, stories, photos and such items. We will try to use those terms with the meaning that Preston suggests, though there will be gray areas and times when we speak of "archives" more broadly.

Archives

 Preston gave us a standard list of categories used by ISHOF for cataloging things for any organization they help. That is what we'll start with in going thru the Historian's materials. We agreed that the list should be sent to all the key people who might have documents of importance to USMS asking them to send a list of what they have. If a detailed list is too long to create promptly, a prompt reply should be made identifying the sorts of materials they have. (3 boxes from Joan Smith).

Data

 We agreed that ISHOF will focus on "archives" and we will continue to develop "data" just as we are. Periodically, our USMS committee will give Preston a CD with current "data" as of that time. HTML (website format) will continue to be the primary format by which we make data available, though many people will find its availability on a CD far more convenient. USMS Archives at ISHOF are likely to have references to our digital "data" (the CD's).

Access

Delivery

Technology

 The technology of archiving is evolving rapidly. Digital archives will probably become more important, but they aren't yet as important as we might think. People still like paper for important things. As data is put on CD's, the technology is evolving rapidly that will enable those CD's to be transferred to more permanent media. We don't need to worry about whether the life of a CD is 7 years or 15 years (but I will still upgrade the quality of the CD's we use to assure the minimum of flaws).

Legal Issues

 If we store items in multiple copies, how concerned do we want to be with copyright matters? Clearly there are copyright issues with the CD's I am getting from Swim Magazine because the photographers own the images. But I would rather not be overly concerned with copyright matters for most materials.

People Resources

Our Committee

ISHOF

Volunteers

 Preston said volunteer help will be very important in reducing our cost. Debbie feels Florida Gold Coast LMSC should respond (she is President). We set a target of finding 8 or more (maximum 15) volunteers who Preston will train to work with our Archives.

Action Items (Tasks)

Scoping Resources & Initial Training

Work Session at Convention

 Preston & Cav felt that a work session at convention where we open up and start going thru Joan Smith's boxes is very important -- it will enable others to see what we are doing and how we are doing it. Cav agreed to participate in that work session. So, I will set about arranging for it. Joan (& Edie?), please start thinking about packing your materials up and shipping them to me, or to ISHOF, or bringing them to convention. More later.

Continuing Work at ISHOF

Continuing Work with Data

Budget

 Preston stressed the magnitude of our undertaking and the great costs it will entail. Some of those costs will be met with volunteer effort. Clearly there needs to be a USMS budget item to support this effort. In brief description of the archiving process, Preston said materials must be cleaned (all paper clips, rubber bands and other extraneous material must be removed). He stressed cleaning is a time consuming job and tedious job. Resources for archiving must be handled as little as possible. Cataloging them is very, very important. (If they aren't catalogued, you're going to have to handle them more to figure out what you've got.) Documents that are especially important should be cleansed of the acid that is in nearly all paper and then hermetically sealed in an airtight plastic envelope. Some documents will be scanned and some photos will be photographed for storage as negatives. Even the boxes in which archives are stored must be acid free boxes.

================================================================================

================================================================================

[c] Then we can develop a plan so that as we catalogue items from Joan Smith & Edie we can determine whether they need to be preserved in their original form or whether a scan is adequate for preservation. I imagine there will be several categories into which materials will be placed. Preston has already told me that his standard procedure for photos is to photograph them and store the negative and that he gets good results when later he uses the negatives. My feeling about that is that the negative is still a one of a kind physical item and that digital archives have the advantage that they can be stored in multiple copies in various locations. Preston also has digital scanning equipment; we'll talk about negatives vs digital scans for photos with Preston. Materials that must be preserved in their original form will be on a list for archival treatment involving removal of acid from the paper and placement in a removeable acetate cover.

Preparation for our RFP

(revised 1/24/02, 3:30 pm est; this document is not expected to change before January 27 8:00 pm est.)

The USMS House of Delegates gave a task to the H&A Committee to move towards working in more "conventional" ways (with regard to our digital/on-line work) and entrusted a project budget of $18,000 to achieve this. We are interpreting "conventional" to mean:

  1. all data is secure, easily transferrable to nearly any environment today, and protected from forseeable future changes in technology.
  2. procedures can be anticipated to be affordable as USMS evolves.
  3. procedures can be anticipated to be transferrable as the people involved change.

This is an evolving plan to meet the above objectives, especially to begin the process of extending responsibility for management of digital archives to persons other than Carl. It is proposed that all H&A data will be maintained (mirrored) on two computers, one in the office of Barbara Dunbar and one in the office of Carl House. We will call these two computers our "source" computers and they are home to our archived content. We do not consider what is on the server to be archives. It is instead the on-line presentation of our archives. Barbara and Carl have been working together for 6 years and will continue to serve as volunteers.

This plan was written by Carl. Barbara strongly concurs with it and we expect our technical collaboration to be well established in 2002 assuming the availability of our $18,000 budget line item for this purpose and assuming permission to proceed soon (within FOG).

Narrative and Photographic Content and Indices

The following are the important folders for which we collect and manage narrative and photographic content and provide indices into the competition databases. These folders are ideas not sufficiently developed yet to be given the same importance as those above.

Database Management

It should be emphasized that we are perfectly capable of managing our own databases, and the quality of our databases has never been questioned nor has the timeliness of updates to our databases. We will satisfy our criteria for security and transferrability by maintaining all our databases in comma delimited format. We have received half a dozen requests for special databases to be given to LMSC's or zones and have complied within a day or two. We are not aware of anyone who asked for data who was unable to obtain it. We have a superb reputation for promptness of updates and corrections. Most updates and corrections are done on the same day we receive them.

Database Presentation

The following are the Top Ten database and those derived from it. These are the All-American History & All-Star History databases that we created (with Meegan Wilson, Sally Dillon, Lynn Hazlewood, Esther Lyman and Tracy Grilli). We don't have current databases for records, but we need access to them. We haven't done much with relays.

About APL

USMS digital archives are stored in an unadorned state. In other words, they have no enhancement that represents a commitment to any computer language or technology (except for some simple html enhancement).

We process our archives for on-line presentation using a language called APL. This language has been chosen because it is a very powerful language and Carl is skilled with it. Ray Polivka [polivkar@juno.com] taught APL internally at IBM for 20 years and since retirement from IBM teaches APL to employees of other corporations. When I asked him for some words on APL, he offered this. "APL is especially effective not only because of its rich and sophisticated mathematical facilities but also because of its conciseness and consistency. These last characteristics are rare in programming languages. Its original design was done with the user and the application developer in mind. This makes APL a very fine prototyping tool. Today a programmer or nonprogrammer user can write an APL program and run it on a vast range of computers from large mainframes, servers to the smallest PCs under a variety of operating systems such as Windows XP-9x, 3.1 DOS, OS/2, Linux, Unix, MVT, MFT, Solaris. All of that is transparent to the APL program. Yes, of course when there is particular hardware to be used that is factored in gracefully. The APL world is a dynamic place today." Ray goes on to say "From my personal experience, I can tell you that there is APL use at IBM, Massachusetts General, Lincoln Life, Connecticut General, Morgan Stanley, Hartford Life, ICGM, AllState, and Cognos." Carl adds SoftMed Systems, Pacific Life, Ryder Systems, CheckFree, The Rouse Company, and Prudential Financial.

In order to assure that USMS has APL support in the event of the loss of Carl, we will develop a list of APL consultants who can provide technical support should they be needed.

Choice of Server

We are hosted by OpenHere.com because they have the language APL and strong support for it. APL is very valuable to us in preparation of webpages and we have wanted the option to use it on the server. We have begun to use APL on the server, but we've not yet gone far in that direction.

Our RFP (Request for Proposal)

The software developed by Carl (or new software to replace it) will be put in a form whereby Barbara can use it. Barbara will act as client to assure continual movement towards our systems being user friendly. She will have the normal client powers of review, negotiation, and, if necessary, to deny payment on this consultancy. In this regard, she will be anticipating that she might be H&A Committee Chair and required to carry on the mission of the Committee. Carl will not receive remuneration under this consultancy and will serve with Barbara as client, particularly on technical matters. But, Barbara will be making the assumption she may need to carry this work on. Some simplification of our archives may be required and, if so, will be negotiated among Carl, Barbara and the consultant(s). It will probably also be necessary to develop a plan for support to this process, including the names of consultants who can help if Carl is not available.

There is a description of how our databases flow at: SiteMap

The RFP will have five major parts. It is acknowledged that the general price range for this consultancy is $18,000 (including expense money for Carl to work with the consultant). Our achievement must be 100% completion on Tasks #1 and #2 (conversion of databases) and we will go as far as we can on the remaining tasks within the cost limits of this consultancy.

  1. Design cataloguing scheme for all important files. (We will provide an inventory of APL files.) The catalogue scheme should reveal the contents of the file from the file name. The catalogue will be the way of reporting the list and contents of files. This catalogue is essential to our archives which will be a permanent record. For an example of how we do this today, see: R_T_Files. But, there is no description for these files since names have not always been consistently formulated by the R_T Committee.
  2. Convert all files from APL .sf files to comma delimited. We will use other file formats for convenience of processing, but comma delimited will be the format for archiving because it best meets the criteria of being secure, easily transferrable to nearly any environment today, and protected from forseeable future changes in technology.
  3. Create or adapt software to replicate our procedures, or revise our software to operate with comma delimited files, and write a user interface.
    • The following procedures are well developed in APL at this point and can be made user friendly.
      • maintenance of the permanent SwimmerID.
      • matching names between Top Ten and the Registration file. (a very difficult and time consuming process with lots of query)
      • automatic placement of links in our webpages. (storing text "unadorned" means it is stored without links)
      • import Top Ten, assigning SwimmerID & verifying validity of data, correcting on query.
      • update SwimmerID info from new Registrar file.
      • update any database file for new SwimmerID info.
      • create summaries and details by LMSC.
      • export any USMS database to a variety of formats.
      • compiling webpages with Javascript enhancement.
      • syncronizing the server and the source computer(s).
    • There are some procedures that cannot easily be made user friendly. They are done in "immediate execution mode". The consultancy may need to improve them or work around them. Some might remain as procedures to be done by technical support personnel (Carl).
  4. Design a documentation system. Write an initial outline and abbreviated draft with the expectation that those using the system will continue improving documentation.
  5. Create an install procedure, presumably using Wise installation software, so that as software is improved it can be easily transferred or installed for a new operator.

©Copyright 1997-2002 USMS.
All Rights Reserved
horizontal line
What's New Page to home page e-mail Page Top