Technology and old dogs

Family history research can all too easily become a solitary experience as we search through online databases for that elusive record so getting together with other researchers in a family history group or society is vital to keep us well-balanced.  Whilst the chat is often rewarding and may lead to that breakthrough in your research occasionally we ponder on more weighty matters......

My own family history group members were recently chatting idly whilst drinking tea and eating dark chocolate ginger biscuits when the conversation turned to the digitisation of records and that OCR techonology is now apparently so much improved as to be able to "read" handwriting.

We've all suffered from the sometimes appalling transcription errors in the census records so the thought that perhaps optical character recognition could make a better job is enticing.  But feelings on digitisation were mixed mainly due to the likelihood that once digitised the originals would be deemed rendundant and destroyed.

We all agreed that nothing beats holding an original document in your hand - even when it has given you a hernia lifting the heavy volume from the trolley to the table.  We are used to not having access to the more popular record sets - the census, parish registers and military service records but even as my (hopefully) free-thinking, egalitarian soul rejoices in greater access to documents via the digitisation process a small part of me revolts against the digital age.

I'm drafting this with pencil and paper.  I can't think or write properly using a keyboard and not at all on the on-screen variety where my hard-won touchtyping skills can't operate.  I'm the product of my age - when computers lived in big temperature- controlled rooms, when slide rules weren't allowed in maths exams and we all used fountain pens not biros.  I am in some ways more in tune with those past record-keepers than with today's database manipulators.

Don't get me wrong - I am fairly technologically savvy - I have more than one pc, a laptop, netbook, tablet, smartphone and digital camera and use them all fairly comprehensively for my research.  I feel new technology is to be embraced and used to the full but still I mourn its arrival in my life.  I use it but do not love it.