Early 1970s - Keypunching in a Library Circulation System

My first reaction to Louie's request was to recall the same events Louie recalls—text processing on a mainframe in the Penn State Computer Center. English majors write JCL, but it seemed better than typing and re-typing, which was the other option in 1978.

I learned that early morning (that's 8:00 AM or so) was a good time to use the computer center, and it was through that experience that I learned the REAL reason mainframe computer centers used to close daily for a couple of hours in the early morning. They SAID it was for computer maintenance, but the real reason is so the computer nerds would need to have another place to go—they needed an apartment to live in and dedicated time to take a shower. Otherwise they would never leave the computer center.

After massaging these fond memories, prompted by Louie's request and Louie's own tale, I realized that I had EARLIER computer experiences. That would be keypunching 80-column Hollerith punch cards for the circulation system at Wilson Library, Western Washington State College (now Western Washing University).

The library item's accession number was the one and only key to the data file; for cross-checking we punched in a limited number of characters of the author, the title, and the call number. There was no online catalog, or catalog of any kind. (Well, there was a 3 x 5 card catalog, but it had nothing to do with the computer data; they were two separate manifestations of the same entity.) You could get batch (i.e., overnight) lists on green-bar paper. I think you could get a sort by call number (unless the call number was really long, in which case it wasn't ALL in the computer).

An unfortunate individual had a full-time job keypunching these 80-column cards (as did many people in many businesses, in those days). I did other “Technical Services” (see note below) things in the library, and filled in as keypuncher for items that couldn’t wait during the real keypuncher’s vacations, sick days, and lunches and breaks. This was the early 1970s, and I was in my early 20s.

Louie is interested in these postings including info about technology and resources—“hardware and software, manuals, how-to-do videos, and so on)”—Hah! Outside the computer center, the vocabulary of computing was pretty much limited to computer, keypunch machine, printout. “Software” was not discussed—software was some mainframe programs that ran at the computer center. Training was what other workers could tell you. (Videos had not been invented.)

It seemed nifty at the time. And every incremental improvement in computing has seemed like a gift. You can imagine what a breakthrough personal computers seemed—we got our first home personal computer in 1984.

Note on term “Technical Services”: This a library term that pre-dates and has nothing to do with computers. Technical Services includes acquiring materials, processing materials, creating and maintaining bibliographic records.

Mary

Early 1980s - Word Processing on an Epson

Few people of my generation had computers when I bought my first one, an Epson which ran on an operating system that was soon abandoned for DOS. It had no hard drive—few personal computers did in the early 1980s. Instead, users inserted one 5¼" black floppy disk in one drive in order to boot up the word processing program and another floppy disk in the other drive to receive—and save—documents. I had chosen the Epson over IBM because it had a WYSIWYG word processing program that allowed users to name files with phrases instead of code words. It didn’t hurt that it was cheaper and prettier, too.

I bought my computer specifically because I needed a tool that would make writing easier. Having started my graduate school career at the advanced age of thirty-eight, I needed all the help I could get. The old pencil-to-typewriter system had barely sustained me through graduate courses, and none of the three-to-ten page papers I had produced over the first three years of study would have won any prizes for neatness of presentation. Composing my dissertation had become a nightmare of handwritten notes and badly typed sheets of cheap paper covered with arrows, connecting lines, and asterisks numbered so that I could figure out what went where. It was an “insert asterisk B here” system which didn’t allow for sudden insights into the text that always occurred when I was trying to type out the final copy.
Oddly enough, my English department colleagues played no part in convincing me to make the purchase. My ex-husband, a scientist who had used the kind of computers that filled large rooms, and my cousin, who was eventually to become a millionaire based on his computer savvy, first urged me to try word-processing. Like others in the English, I wasn’t sure that the computer would be any improvement over the typewriter. However, shortly after a disaster of an editing session occurred that left my entire living room floor covered with an odd bits of text taped together in a gigantic puzzle. As I attempted to type up those pieces in the order in which I’d laid them out and NOT revise at the same time, I became obsessed with the idea of a technology which would keep me off my knees and the floor clear. Crazed by hope of order, I took out a student loan and turn over most of it over to the Epson people. It couldn’t get much worst, I figured—anything that might help get more words on paper had to be an improvement.

And, much to my joy, the “little Epson that could” did help get words on paper. It helped me insert one block of words into another. It allowed me to remove words but not lose them, and it even provided a way to mark a place where I needed more information and ask questions of myself to be considered later. I reveled in on-screen composing, creating documents of ten to thirty pages. I free-wrote; I revised; I printed out hard text that I could edit and then throw away! Producing text ceased to be a problem. Revising became a intellectual pursuit rather than a simple matter of correctly reproducing a scribbled document.

The process was not without grief. Before I learned the importance of saving documents frequently, I lost some important ideas and had to recreate them. Once in a flurry of excitement and adrenaline, I produced thirty pages in a binge writing session that lasted all day. As hard as it is for me to understand today, I never saved during that long productive day. Saving was something I habitually did at the end of a writing session. When I finally gave in to mental and physical exhaustion, I simply turned off the computer. In a split second, I knew I’d lost it all. My grief was only exceeded by my disgust with my failure to follow a simply technological process.

But I learned from that experience—I have probably saved this document too compulsively—and as I produced my dissertation, I discovered a tool that drove me to advocate for computers for students as well as for the lonely academic writer in the garret. Computer composing remains at the center of my pedagogy, and I’ve urged more than one student to at least try using the computer as more than a typewriter with spell-check. Nowadays it’s uncommon to find students who don’t have computers in college. That’s not to say that I believe the nation has succeeded in providing universal access to technology. Many families still can’t afford computers much less internet connections. Like me, today’s college-aged adults still take out student loans in order to buy a laptop or desk model computer, and just as often as not, their purchases, like mine, are prompted by their need to write papers, to compose and revise, to write.

Marcia

1989-1990: Computing in Kindergarten

My first memories of computing probably date back to about 1989-90. In Kindergarten, my mom would come into my classroom and help all of us on our class computer. We would play math games on big floppy disks, (which of course were all the rage back then). In first grade I remember my parents bought me two floppy disks games, "Chip N' Dale Rescue Rangers" and "Mother Goose." I would play them for hours! My very first CD ROM (oooohh.....ahhhhh) was the Encarta Encyclopedia. I was a big nerd (still am) and I was extremely proud of my academic record. I wrote many reports with the aid of that CD ROM. It not only had amazing articles, but it had pictures, video time lines, and sound recordings. I never typed my own reports, though. My mom always helped me with that. I didn't learn to actually type until the 6th and 7th grades. Of course by then, computers were much more advanced and very different from those funny floppy disks and green type. It's amazing what kindergarteners do today versus when I was that age. I taught preschool for a while and some of them knew how to not only turn on the computer, but load and play a program! Who knows what kids that young will be able to do in another 10 or 20 years.

Kristina