Historical Record Keeping
Jun. 27th, 2007 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI solved a problem at work. I think I really solved it, too, because the person called me back later to confirm that my idea worked perfectly. Love that. (As contrasted with the times when they call back to say it didn't work after all.)
I also found a bug. Not exactly a bug, just a very large discrepancy between the real system and the test system in an area where it is unlikely to matter in the slightest. Still, I would like to describe a single reality in my training module. We're going to have a meeting about which is the preferred reality.
I went to a session on old student records. I got to see a large book, a ledger, from the late 1800s with hand-written lists of all grades awarded over a three-year period.
In 1897, we moved to separate cards for each student with the information typed in or stamped. There were certain kinds of changes, like from incomplete to a grade, that were made by crossing out the old grade and writing in the new one. There are others, like fixing a mistake, where an electric eraser was used to eliminate the wrong grade and the new one was written on top of it. You had to be careful not to erase your way all the way through the card.
Later, things were computerized, and each semester a sticker would be printed for each student with all their courses and grades for that semester, and this would be added to their cards. This increased legibility and reduced errors. This may also be when we started keeping track of course titles. But people would spend weeks applying stickers to cards.
Then in the late 1970s, we went paperless. Everything was just stored right on the computer.
People in my office have to know how to find and interpret these old records sometimes like when a transcript is requested or a diploma needs to be certified or an former student returns. Nowadays, it's pretty rare to have to deal with records for people before 1978, but not that rare. Records have to be copied online for about ten returning students each semester, for example.
They have to know things like if there are two last names, and one is on top of the other, the top one is the real last name, and the bottom one is the maiden name and is to be treated as another middle name. (Women who married during college did not get as many name options from us as they do now.)
I am not one of the people who has to deal with this stuff, although I did used to help certify graduation using microfilm copies of the cards.
The system I work with, the computerized degree audit system, was created in the 1980s. Before that, degree audits were done on paper. Charts were created for each degree program, and the appropriate one was filled in for each student. When you requested an official degree audit, it could take up to eight months to receive one from our largest college. (Now you can get one in less than 15 minutes if you are a student; instantly if you are an adviser--unless it's during a registration period, where the same resources are being stretched more tightly.)
But what were degree audits like in the late 1800s? How did folks in the dean's offices even know what students had taken and what their grades were? It's hard for me to imagine life before photocopiers. The Registrar had to get the grades. The students had to (or, before the 1970s, maybe the student's parents got them). Did deans have to go to the Registrar's office check out the ledger to check the progress of their students?
I also found a bug. Not exactly a bug, just a very large discrepancy between the real system and the test system in an area where it is unlikely to matter in the slightest. Still, I would like to describe a single reality in my training module. We're going to have a meeting about which is the preferred reality.
I went to a session on old student records. I got to see a large book, a ledger, from the late 1800s with hand-written lists of all grades awarded over a three-year period.
In 1897, we moved to separate cards for each student with the information typed in or stamped. There were certain kinds of changes, like from incomplete to a grade, that were made by crossing out the old grade and writing in the new one. There are others, like fixing a mistake, where an electric eraser was used to eliminate the wrong grade and the new one was written on top of it. You had to be careful not to erase your way all the way through the card.
Later, things were computerized, and each semester a sticker would be printed for each student with all their courses and grades for that semester, and this would be added to their cards. This increased legibility and reduced errors. This may also be when we started keeping track of course titles. But people would spend weeks applying stickers to cards.
Then in the late 1970s, we went paperless. Everything was just stored right on the computer.
People in my office have to know how to find and interpret these old records sometimes like when a transcript is requested or a diploma needs to be certified or an former student returns. Nowadays, it's pretty rare to have to deal with records for people before 1978, but not that rare. Records have to be copied online for about ten returning students each semester, for example.
They have to know things like if there are two last names, and one is on top of the other, the top one is the real last name, and the bottom one is the maiden name and is to be treated as another middle name. (Women who married during college did not get as many name options from us as they do now.)
I am not one of the people who has to deal with this stuff, although I did used to help certify graduation using microfilm copies of the cards.
The system I work with, the computerized degree audit system, was created in the 1980s. Before that, degree audits were done on paper. Charts were created for each degree program, and the appropriate one was filled in for each student. When you requested an official degree audit, it could take up to eight months to receive one from our largest college. (Now you can get one in less than 15 minutes if you are a student; instantly if you are an adviser--unless it's during a registration period, where the same resources are being stretched more tightly.)
But what were degree audits like in the late 1800s? How did folks in the dean's offices even know what students had taken and what their grades were? It's hard for me to imagine life before photocopiers. The Registrar had to get the grades. The students had to (or, before the 1970s, maybe the student's parents got them). Did deans have to go to the Registrar's office check out the ledger to check the progress of their students?