The Stamford Historical Society

Presents the Virginia T. Davis, Stamford Historical Society
Distinguished Service Award to

Ann M. Case

7 June 2010
Address by Ron Marcus, Librarian

Good evening. It is again my pleasure to present this year’s Virginia T. Davis, Stamford Historical Society Distinguished Service Award to one of our most outstanding volunteers.

This award is given in memory of a truly remarkable individual, whose devotion to the City of Stamford through this organization was summarized in a 23 March 1983 Advocate Editorial. “[Virginia] believed that a community’s sense of its own history gave it a solidity and depth that it otherwise would not have. She was right in thinking so.”

A recent perusal of websites linked through the Connecticut League of History Organizations’ site, as well as our own, revealed that to date, only five history associations in our state, besides this one, offer some degree of online information regarding their holdings of printed materials. Inevitably, over the course of time, more institutions will follow suit

In 2006, an agreement was reached with the Ferguson Library enabling our organization to enter printed items into their online catalog. Materials would be listed as reference, non-circulating, with a Dewey decimal call number, and the Historical Society as location.

However, in order to accomplish this, all items had to be entered using the MARC system of cataloging, developed by the Library of Congress in the 1960’s. After studying this method, volunteers began entering records with varied results. While the concept of MARC is logical, it was somewhat daunting at first, resulting in a slow rate of data entry.

When our award recipient began volunteering here, she not only informed us of her expertise with MARC but graciously offered to proceed with this project.

It was then that we learned of her career at H. W. Wilson Company, New York. This firm is one of the preeminent reference publishers in the world, perhaps best known for Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, Wilson Web system, and Biography databases.

Her endeavors have brought a whole new dimension to the Society’s library by proficiently cataloging our book and pamphlet holdings here on a computer, which then disseminates the data to the internet via the Ferguson Library’s online catalog.

In gratitude for her time and the professional standards she has applied towards this critical endeavor, it is now my privilege to present this year’s Virginia T. Davis, Stamford Historical Society Distinguished Service Award to Ann M. Case.

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