How to Soup Up a Filing System

By Philip Faflick

Data bases track gifts, choirs, fish and even mops

Joe Harvey had taken precautions, but the police were too quick. Before Harvey's call-girl business in Orange County, Calif., could put its planned emergency procedures into motion, the local vice squad had seized the firm's computers and software. Recorded on 20 small Mylar discs was evidence that helped convict Harvey on two counts of pimping and one count of conspiracy: the names and credit card numbers of several thousand male customers, descriptions of known and suspected vice-squad members, and careful charts on more than 100 ladies of negotiable virtue, including hours worked, customers serviced and payments received.

Harvey is one of a growing company of enthusiasts who practice personal data basing. In dens, living rooms and small offices across the country, an estimated 1 million data basers are transferring the contents of black books, file cards and shaggy-eared folders into their personal computers, cataloguing everything from the histories of race horses to inventories of electric trains, from collections of dirty jokes to lists of talking books. There are now some 130 software aids for data basing on microcomputers, among them, D.B. Master, dBase II and VisiFile. But the fastest-selling data-base program in the U.S. is the disc that Harvey used: Personal Filing System, or PFS (Software Publishing Corp.; $125).

PFS retrieves, adds, updates, prints and refiles information stored within a computer. Says Software Publishing President Fred Gibbons: "We've modeled it something like a card file." Basically, PFS and other listmaking programs are souped-up electronic Rolodexes with built-in cross-reference capabilities. Having stored his trivia on an AppleIIe, Baseball Card Collector Louis Musher, 13, of New York City can call up such arcana as the names of all Montreal Expo catchers who batted .250 or better in 1980. In Sun City, Ariz., Vinton Ostrander, 76, is using his Franklin Ace computer to record the genealogy of some 3,000 relatives and will soon have instant access to 300 years of family history. One New York City editor who is to be married in May has created a data base to map out chapel seating for 100 wedding guests, table arrangements for 220 lunch guests and tabulations on no-shows. He is also keeping a record of those who give gifts and what they send. His bride insisted that he let her at least address the invitations in her own hand. Explains he: "She said I had to stop somewhere."

When the longtime secretary of the Bethel Lutheran Church in Auburn, Mass., decided to retire last year, the new minister, the Rev. Edward Voosen, was petrified. "Here was the whole institutional memory about to walk away," he says. He found salvation in a Radio Shack computer, which he now uses to keep track of the personal and familial problems of his flock. Voosen also charts the membership of his seven choirs, Sunday school, nursery school and church committees. "It's no miracle maker," he says. "But it sure makes life easier."

"A godsend" is what Golf Pro Lew Bullock calls the IBM Personal Computer that totes up members' handicaps for the Bowling Green Golf Club in Oak Ridge, N.J. "It's a lifesaver," says Bill Poland, board member of the Northlake Aquatic Club swim team in Atlanta, of the Osborne computer he carries poolside to chart practice and meet results. "What used to take twelve people and two hours now takes two people and no time at all."

Some other data basers:

> Commercial Fisherman Mark Morris of Juneau, Alaska, regularly records the weight and various species of his catch, areas he has fished, weather and tide conditions. Self-employed and the owner of his own boat at 19, Morris happily predicts, "In a few years, using the data I'm now collecting, I'll be better at guessing where the fish will be."

> The children of the Cohen family of West Chester, Pa., operate a computerized cleaning business. Lewis and Marlene, both 25, Natalie, 23, and Morris, 15, keep watch over clients' names, schedules and creditworthiness, plus the quirks and odd needs of customers. They also inventory brooms, mops and paper towels.

> Chicago Alderman Lawrence Bloom keeps a list of 6,000 voters on a computer. "It's very personalized," he says. "Precinct workers can call someone and say, 'Alderman Bloom helped you get rid of that abandoned car. Now he needs your help.' "

Not all personal data basing, however, makes good sense. Two of the most widely touted applications, balancing checking accounts and filing kitchen recipes, are better done with pencil and paper than on screen. Checkbooks can be carried in a pocket and filled out on the spot. For recipes, one good cookbook holds more data than eight floppy discs and can be thumbed with wet or sticky hands. Mastering data-base software can also be a taxing task, especially for the neophyte. Most data-base programs are marketed for business use; they come with powerful features and inch-thick manuals. Even with the simplest software, designing an efficient data base for an odd personal need is an art that often requires hours of trial and error. Advises PFS's Gibbons: "You have to ask yourself, 'How many times am I going to access this information and in how many ways?' " Gibbons still keeps his own business contacts in a card file.

--By Philip Faflick.

Reported by Robert Buderi/San Francisco and Bruce van Voorst/New York

With reporting by Robert Buderi and Bruce van Voorst This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.