I learnt Dacombe shorthand in Australia in 11th secretarial studies. Learnt to type on an old manual too, but was never fast enough to move up to one of the few electrics (this was end of the 70's). I think the school got its first pc's in about 1981. A dear friend of mine worked for a bank and as she was the fastest typist she got the new machines. She was too fast for most of the machines and regularly got them jammed up because they couldn't keep up with her flying fingers.
When I went to College, I learnt all of my library cataloguing using AACR2 and Sears list of subject headings. We had a unit later on in about 3rd year librarianship where we had to do online cataloguing, and had allotted times to get into the Australian Bibliographic Network. The cataloguing using the same rules however every field was tagged/coded and you had to get your coding correct or it spat the entry back at you. It made for some laborious cataloguing and made doing it straight onto cards seem much faster. I'm glad I did it though because my very first library job was in a University support company and I was hired for a contract to catalogue for a State Government departmental library, and I was required to create interim records directly into ABN. I then moved to a research facility and it was all different, and our data entry was done on XT's when I started, and the data was then massaged for the various library outputs. When I left 6 1/2 years later I was the first person there to have a 486. DH took me to the Museum on the Microsoft Campus in Redmond about 2 years ago, and at the time it was really well done, and I liked how they juxtaposed MS's development against the cultural backdrop of the time. It had some cool stuff. They're redone it now it's in a new building, and when we visited with our 2 kids (teen and tween), there was almost no history but some 'cool' new toys for them to try out. I thought it was a shame that the company history is no longer on display, as it really put the modern computer age into perspective. Oh well ... I'm off to play with my washer and dryer that have more computing power than my old 486 :-) Helen in foggy Duvall, WA To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat y...@address.here. For help, write to arachnemodera...@yahoo.com.
