Gilfillan’s Gift to You Mary Lynne Spazok
Because of the generosity of Margaret Gilfillan, residents of Upper St. Clair, and distant friends, the USC Historical Society has conserved an impressive and priceless collection of papers, books, photographs, maps, artifacts, antiques, and other historical materials. Weekly, Historical Society president Jean Brown receives many requests for information about USC, especially genealogy. Each request requires extensive manual research of paper files and photographs. Through the use of information technology and the computer, Gilfillan Homestead and Upper St. Clair history will be forever preserved in digital format and accessible regardless of where you live. Anthology management undertakes the organization and storage of vast amounts of data specific to a detailed digital collection or database. Computer science—it’s not just about hardware and software anymore; it’s also about oceans, stars, networks of friends, and history. Sound complex? It is! Fortunately, members of the Historical Society found Carolyn Jones. She is as excited about history as every Pittsburgher is about the Steelers! Saving yesterday for tomorrow, Carolyn is pursuing a career in an academic library environment, which requires her to interact with researchers and students. Carolyn states, “Within my specialization, I explore creative solutions to common challenges at many libraries (public and private) to encourage exploitation of both online and print holdings.” Carolyn is pursuing a master’s degree in Library Science with a specialization in preservation and special collection management as a student at The University of Pittsburgh through the Pitt Partners Program (PPP). This program, sponsored by the faculty of the Library and Information Science Program, provides Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) students the opportunity to pursue their education while gaining related work experience in Pittsburgh-area libraries, archives, cultural, and other types of institutions. The MLIS program partners with various institutions to benefit students by providing work experience through partial tuition scholarships. MLIS benefits from the students’ expertise all the while attracting quality students who covet a work/study opportunity. The PPP supports full-time MLIS students with partial tuition scholarships for three terms based on the number of hours a student works per Gilfillan descendant Jean Brown week while attending classes on campus. In addition to the scholarship, the student may receive an hourly wage/stipend from the partner institution. A student working ten hours per week receives a three-credit tuition scholarship each term, while 20 hours of employment per week earns a six-credit tuition scholarship. An associated hourly wage/stipend is variable and determined and paid by the partner institution—USC Historical Society, for example. 16
UPPER ST. CLAIR TODAY
Winter 2011
Along with typical research, Carolyn is proficient in creating archival storage containers such as Mylar encapsulations. Encapsulation protects documents from rough treatment and holds fragile items together. Reversible, it does not harm documents with use of heat or adhesives. Book repair includes spines, loose hinges, cover re-attachment, “tipping in” (a method of incorporating loose pages, a detached leaf, replacement page, errata sheet, or other insertion into a bound volume) pages and more. In addition to manipulating physical documents, her experience extends into digital database Metadata. Humans (search engine social browsers) enter a topic and receive a reply, thus exploiting Metadata. From Wikipedia 2011: Metadata (Meta content) is traditionally found in the card catalogs of libraries. As information becomes increasingly digital, metadata is used to describe digital data using metadata standards specific to a particular discipline. By describing the contents and context of data files, the quality of the original data/files is greatly increased. For example, a webpage may include metadata specifying what language it is written in, what tools were used to create it, and where to go for more information on the subject, allowing browsers to improve the user’s experience. Gilfillan will also link into The Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections. This website provides access to over 23,000 visual images of the Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania region selected from over 50 photographic collections held by places, including the Archives Service Center at The University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, Chatham University, and Heinz History Center, just to name a few. This wide range of photographs offers a comprehensive and compelling look at how Pittsburghers lived and worked in the 19th and 20th centuries. These images visually document the cultural, educational, and social variations of the greater Pittsburgh region, as well as its vast infrastructure, regional landscapes, and diverse transportation modes. Paramount is Pittsburgh’s vast immigrant workforce, steel industry, education community, and ethnic diversification. The coming year promises to be remarkable for the Upper St. Clair Historical Society with the formal introduction of the Gilfillan Homestead user-friendly website as well as its graphic gift to the Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections. Thanks to the wisdom of Margaret Gilfillan, passion of intern Carolyn Jones, faithful dedication of Jean Brown, and loyal society members, a few computer key strokes and a nanosecond will instantly showcase Gilfillan Farm, a wonderful mainstay of Upper St. Clair. n Intern Carolyn Jones