RATIONALE FOR WEB
A digital format has many advantages. Accessibility is the principal advantage. The material will be available throughout the world. Until now, local historians used the book format. Relatively few books are printed. Within the limited audience for the books, many individuals cannot afford the luxury of purchasing a hardback copy of a local history that at today’s prices sells for between $25.00 and $40.00. Older history publications about Winchester have become rarities and copies in the Library cannot be circulated. (Of course, the website could disappear but measures will be taken to ensure it has continuous support and to ensure archival records are kept.)
Another advantage of the digital format is quick accessibility to a piece of information. Thus a user can do a site search more quickly than a reader could skim a card catalog or examine the index of a book.
An important reason for the use of digital format involves the artifacts and images of the past. At present, the Handley Library Archive in Winchester contains some photographs of twentieth century Winchester. Examining these pictures is a laborious and irritating task. To look at photographs of downtown Winchester in the 1950’s, one must skim every relevant card in a card catalog (organized by address), fill in a form requesting the picture, wait while the archives gets the picture, put on white gloves to remove each picture from an envelop and decide if it is useful. If a picture fits the researcher’s needs, the researcher can copy or photograph the picture or pay for a copy to be prepared by a photographic service that will not be available until several weeks after the request. There is no scanner. This process is labor intensive for both researcher and Archive staff. Those without a serious interest in the past would not undertake this effort.
WFC HISTORY will revolutionize this process and reduce the tedious work of both archivist and researcher. The website will make the full content of the archive easily available to anyone with even a casual interest in the past. It will establish a process to minimize the handling of old materials and it will provide a ‘backup’ for the photographic repository.
