Some times I thinks about people that I once knew.
It’s just like keeping a scrapbook that’s full of obituaries,
or having a notebook full of information about missing people.
You may have them in your possession,
but fewer & fewer people you know will of meet the individuals
who are listed in them.
During this year this observation has really come home to me.
First of all I got a confirmation about someone I used to know
having died a few years back.
Then over the last month or so I have been trying to contact
someone who I last saw over a quarter of a century go.
I still can not trace her,
& I’ve tryed ever route which I know.
Over the 60 years that I have been alive we’ve moved on from
Paper & Card records, to Microfilm & Micrcofiche, and then to
electronic dates bases.
Yet just as we have moved on from mainframe to PC to laptop to
netbook, w e have & are constantly changing the software which
holds these records.
I just wish that some of the people who work on computer
software would keep in mind the old saying:-
If it ain’t bust then don’t fix it.
Yet with all of these moves of records have come losses of
information,
& the increasing presumption that ‘it’s all on the computer.’
Not so.
What makes it really difficult in tracing people is that they
might have common names,
or be know just by their nickname(s),
or changed their surname,
and now be living on the side of the world.
While the phone book, and other directories, give just an initial
& surname on the basis that you will already know just where
they live.
Ever wondered just why the police are always so keen to know
peoples date of birth?
If more directories included this piece of information then it
would be so much easier to trace ones old friends.
In the meanwhile I’m left looking for other peoples scrapbook
which will supplement my own.