A Calling to Catalog Holocaust’s Horrors
As Kim Beauchamp watched director Steven Spielberg’s cinema epic about American slavery, “Amistad,” her thoughts turned to how much richer our understanding of the 19th century would be if modern cameras had existed then. “Wouldn’t it be cool if there were videotapes of slaves, or former slaves, telling their stories?” Beauchamp recalled thinking. “We have no perspective.”
Beauchamp’s reaction isn’t surprising, given her work. She’s the director of cataloging at the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to videotaping eyewitness Holocaust testimonies. (“Shoah” is the Hebrew word for holocaust.) The organization, founded by Spielberg after he made the Holocaust-themed “Schindler’s List” in 1993, is compiling a comprehensive multimedia archive. Beauchamp, and a staff of about 70, are indexing the interviews with the aid of digital technology in offices on the back lot of a Hollywood studio.
The foundation has so far videotaped interviews in 30 languages with more than 46,000 survivors of Nazi Germany’s genocide campaign. It expects to add 5,000 this year.
Beauchamp, 31, has no personal Holocaust connection or even a particular interest in history. What she did have was an unfocused desire to find more meaningful work.
After college, Beauchamp worked in production in New York for six years, first making videos at Unisys Corp., then at a firm that produced computer software training films. Beauchamp gained sought-after expertise in digital hardware and software on the job. She found technology fascinating, but longed for a position that represented more than a paycheck.
She relocated to the West Coast in 1995 and was immediately drawn to the Shoah foundation’s work. “I took one look at this project and said, ‘Here is a worthwhile cause,’ ” Beauchamp said. “It will mean something long after we’re all gone.”
Beauchamp started as a tape librarian, taking a 50% pay cut from her previous job. After a brief stint as a cataloging department coordinator, she became information technology manager, overseeing the foundation’s computer network.
For the last two years, as director of cataloging, Beauchamp has worked with 20 colleagues to build the systems that organize the materials. “Cataloging had some of the most difficult technology challenges,” Beauchamp said.
She and a team of programmers and technologists developed custom software to link indexed material with the corresponding portions of the interviews. That took nearly a year. And in a move that some librarians find troubling, the foundation also decided to use home-grown subject headings for indexing. The foundation decided against relying solely on the Library of Congress headings, which are used by libraries and research institutions around the country, because it found them too broad.
Only the foundation staff has access to the archive now, but eventually the material will be available to scholars, historians and at libraries. Four survivor testimonies will be the nucleus of an educational CD-ROM, which the foundation will release in the fall.
Humans have been cataloging historical material since long before the dawn of the computer age, and gathering material for an index is still accomplished in the old-fashioned, hands-on way. People decide what they want to annotate, then write it down (or in this case, type it), keyword by keyword, or key phrase by key phrase.
After that, the wonder of digital technology kicks in. Computer power means users can retrieve cataloged information from multiple sources at the click of a mouse. Digitally stored materials should also last longer, since computer code doesn’t erode like paper, film or videotape. The system saves physical space. It’s hard to say how many warehouses this archive would occupy if its contents, which would take more than 10 years to view, were not stored digitally.
One of the hardest parts of Beauchamp’s job is coping with the dark nature of the archive material. “When I first started watching the testimonies, I had nightmares,” she said.
The work has taught her not to sweat life’s small setbacks. “You listen to these stories and realize how good you have it,” she said.
Beauchamp’s job is unique in some ways, but her cataloging and computing skills could be used in other settings. C. Olivia Frost, associate dean and professor of the School of Information at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, said libraries, archives and corporations are constantly seeking personnel with expertise in library science and digital technology.
“Library science needs computing people, and the computing people need the intellectual systems that provide organization,” Frost said.
A Call for Careers
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AT A GLANCE
* Name: Kim Beauchamp
* Job: Director of cataloging
* Employer: Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation
Education: Bachelor’s degree in communications, University of Delaware
* Home: Toluca Lake
