18 CAMBRJDGESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL THE REWARDS OF A YEAR OF HARD SLOG David Haigh recovers from a nightmare common to IT users for long enough to describe Cambridgeshire County Council's use of computers. I was asked to write a few words on the role of computers in conservation and when seeking clarification of this unusually wide brief found myself hearing the dreaded words: Scene: Harrassed Conservation Officer surrounded by piles of files, remains of collapsed buildings, dissatisfied customers ere etc answering phone with hair standing on end and turning gradually pale .... Cheery voice on phone concludes hearty invitation to write interesting article with the words that all prospective authors dread "Yes you know the sort of thing, something about how computers are used in conservation." Self: "But what particular aspect of our computer usage - desktop publishing? databases? monitoring of applications?" Cheery voice: "Oh whatever you like but do make it interesting and none of your usual waffle mind." The scene changes to a darkened garret lit by the early morning rays of a weak and pale sun where the said Conservation Officer resides. There on the one battered table are three large empty single malt bottles and a short but exemplary article on a borrowed word processor. (The bottles were like that when I started officer!) Confident that the good deed has been done I leant back to admire once more the polished prose and accidentally switched the machine off at the wall - thus losing David Haigh's sample building, The Chapter House, Leverington after the fire in June 1986 (photos by Robert Walker, Cambridgeshire County Council). the entire article. The following article is therefore but a shadow of its former self! My first major involvement with computers was with Cambridgeshire County Council and came with the need to handle the vastly increased amount of information provided by the county resurvey of listed buildings. We had no real idea of what we wanted; all we knew was that we could no longer call to mind all the listed buildings of the county or all the information that we held on them. We chose an IBM mainframe word searching programme STAIRS. This was because: ( 1) We needed a database which could hold all the information on these buildings and was capable of easy updating and access. (2) The county archaeological database used the same system and we decided that it would be sensible to have a compatible database so that both could be used by either department. (3) We wanted a database that was fast, used the full official list description and provided readable text rather than abbreviated codes which meant nothing to anybody. (4) No micro based system could do this at the time and they still cannot. They were and are still slower and all require the essential information to be extracted from each building record to be broken down into separate codes and entered into fields within the record. This was a long and laborious system which was efficient in terms of computer usage but no use to the computer illiterate Conservation Officer. Planning perm1ss10nhas now been granted, against the County Council's recommendation, for new dwellings in the grounds and rebuilding behind the facade. It also meant that in most cases a finished computer record consisted of a series of meaningless codes which could only be interpreted by the initiated. (5) We therefore set up a standard record with different fields which could be used in conjunction with the archaeology database. This affected the format but the fields were our own. Unlike a micro based system, each field is of any length except for the grid references, record numbers and dates which are of fixed length so that they can be searched differently. The panel opposite gives a sample from the database: • As you can see, the record consisted of a full list description and then any other information that we held on the building - including the file references for the planning history. Put into a separate field for easier searching were a few pointers to the building type and grade. These can be displayed or printed separately and provide a short summary of the building type location and grade. The text was typed by our own secretarial staff into the space in an otherwise empty record and the rest of the information was filled in by a swarm of MSC loons recruited for the purpose, trained in computer usage and instilled with conservation zeal. The records were checked by trained staff prior to being loaded onto the mainframe and the whole process took approximately two years. We were able to use the skills of the MSC staff as appropriate and have our own series of computer programs to aid updating of the record, We were also able to incorporate RCHM and VCH descriptions into the record without major difficulty. The end result is an easy to read clearly comprehensible system that can be searched by anyone with the minimum of difficulty. Text is searched using simple commands and the searches are virtually instantaneous. One result of this is that the database can be searched by anyone having access to the county mainframe computer including schools, libraries, District Councils and~the like, which has meant that we are dealing less with the general public on simple "is our building listed?" enquiries because these can be dealt with at source. We then found that it was possible to copy this information onto micros and combine it with reports. Before we knew what we were involved with we found that CONTEXT 25 I
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