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Shoah Visual History Foundation
Documenting Stories of Holocaust Survivors
As a result, Spielberg founded Survivors of the Shoah: Visual
History Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to
videotaping and archiving interviews of Holocaust survivors all
over the world. These interviews are catalogued and archived
digitally, and will be made available through museums, educational
institutions and non-profit organizations, and through educational
documentaries, books and CD-ROMs.
From 1994 through mid-1997, the Shoah Foundation conducted 31,622
interviews in 29 different languages in more than 40 countries
worldwide. With its staff of over 200, complemented by over 3,500
volunteers worldwide, the Foundation is committed to capturing more
than 50,000 testimonies.
The Foundation uses FileMaker Pro to simplify the large job of
scheduling survivor interviews, tracking incoming phone calls, and
handling payroll. "We started using FileMaker because of its
flexibility,” said Matthew Chuck, the Foundation's Manager of
Information Technology. "Originally we had four databases: for
survivors, videographers, volunteers, and interviewers. Now we have
one relational database that uses over 32 other databases to access
information.”
The purpose of the database is to simplify the complex job of
scheduling some 50,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors around
the world. Hosted on an NT Server, the program is accessible to
Foundation workers on both Macintosh and PC systems. In addition to
storing basic survivor information, the databases include the
complete contents of a 45-page survivor background questionnaire.
It tracks individuals calling into the Foundation's toll-free 800
number, helps schedule interviews (coordinating interviewers and
videographers schedules), and helps to handle payroll.
"Almost every department also has a customized database they use
to perform their job,” Matthew Chuck said. "It's been very easy to
train people, because we've created all the databases with the
input of the staff themselves. We try to make the interfaces as
intuitive as possible.
"I like the fact that it's easy to get end users to a level of
expertise. If we were using other databases, every time someone
wanted to generate a new report layout, I'd have to send someone
from my department down to do the work. The staff feels that
FileMaker Pro is always changing to meet their needs.”
Matthew Chuck is particularly pleased with FileMaker Pro's
networking performance, especially its ability to compartmentalize
for incremental backups. Before using FileMaker Pro, backup was an
ordeal. Each user had to log off the database, or be kicked off by
the system administrator. Since the Foundation backs up its
computers every three hours, this twenty to thirty minute process
used up quite a bit of staff time.
With FileMaker Pro, the system administrator is able to "freeze” a
particular database for the few moments it takes to back up, and
then release it immediately. Users can take a quick break and
resume their work from the same place or are able to keep working
in other sections of the database.
"We work in a very fast paced environment,” Matthew Chuck said. "
In a way, we're in preproduction, production and post production
simultaneously to produce 50,000 short documentaries. To be able to
have all of our departments interact with each other through
FileMaker Pro, pulling up individual databases and have each
database customized really makes our work much more efficient.”
- Founded by Steven Spielberg, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to videotaping and archiving interviews of Holocaust survivors all over the world. The Foundation uses FileMaker Pro to schedule survivor interviews, track incoming phone calls, and handle payroll.
- Information Technology