Grant takes history into high tech - Museum adding computers, hoping for younger volunteers

The Lincoln Park Historical Museum hopes a recent grant not only will enable it to upgrade but also draw younger people into museum activities.

An AT&T grant of $16,547 will help the museum upgrade its Web presence and add a laptop computer, other computers, a projector and a combination printer, fax and scanner.

Right now, most Lincoln Park Historical Society members are older people.

"The thought is that by providing the seniors who run our historical museum the latest computer technology as well as a Web site, we can attract younger volunteers to assist them on tasks such as putting together PowerPoint presentations and maintaining a Web site," said Leslie Lynch-Wilson, president of the Lincoln Park Preservation Alliance.

The AT&T Excelerator grant was made to the alliance, which will pass it on to the museum. The museum already has a computer, but the new equipment, which will include MS Office and Publisher and PastPerfect museum software, will upgrade the museum, Lynch-Wilson said.

To museum director Muriel Lobb, "It is a very good thing. It brings us up to modern times, and we will have the Web site we had already been working on done professionally and it will allow us to go into the schools and make presentations in the schools and it will bring younger people into the museum who are interested in using this equipment, so why not?

"That generation in their 50s will be bringing their expertise into the museum, and what's wrong with that?" said Lobb.

"Meanwhile," she said, "I can go on doing what I am doing, which is putting our artifacts on the computer. We are computerized, but after you get computers you have to check what you have on the computer because there always are errors."

Earlier this month, Yvette Pugh, director of external affairs at AT&T Michigan, presented the check to the Lincoln Park Preservation Alliance.

AT&T Excelerator is a competitive technology grant program run by the AT&T Foundation, the charitable arm of AT&T Inc. The program has awarded $39 million to nonprofit organizations nationwide since 2002. The Excelerator program's aim is to help nonprofits bring technology into their organizations.

While computers are great, Lobb says the old paper index cards still have their place.

"Now we have the ability to put things on the computer, and it took better than six months to get it from cards to the computer. We keyboarded all the information from index cards, which are really easier to use than the computer. It's quicker to correct something from a card. When you're dealing with a bunch of cards, you take them out in your hand and you lay them out the way you want to lay them out. When you have them on a computer, you're sitting in front of that thing, but you can't take them out and lay them out.

"Cards are much easier!"