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	This article first appeared in SIGGNL 15 (June 1997)

	Postcard Collecting and Family History: a review by Tony Rydings
	Although I do not reckon to be a collector of postcards, my family's collection of cards dates back nearly a hundred years, and has contributed in no small way to knowledge of my mother's family. Correspondence cards were accepted through the post in Austria in 1869, and in Britain a year later. It was not until 1894 that picture postcards as we know them today were used, the postage rate then being one halfpenny (old currency). Cards became so popular that early in this century over two million were sent through the post in this country per day. By 1920 the inland postage rate had increased to three halfpence (the letter rate by then being twopence), and the use of postcards dropped greatly. Collecting postcards did not become a hobby to rival philately until about 1980, though small collections were to be found in many families.
	According to modern collectors' guides, there are two main categories of collections of postcards: those dealing with particular subjects, and those depicting particular views and places. I will not go further into this aspect, but suggest that to the family historian there is yet another category, which relates not to the pictorial interest of the card, but rather to the written material which is added to it. It may be said that postcards anticipated to some extent the use which was later to be made of the telephone, for it was not unusual to send a card locally in the morning, to say that one would be coming for tea the same day -- not bad value for a halfpenny postage.
	A special program, *Postcard Collector*'s Database, has been devised for this purpose, and provides an easily installed means of recording postcards on any IBM compatible computer. This is designed especially for the collector of postcards of either (or both) of the categories of cards as described above, though not without some modification for family historians whose interest is less in the card than in what is added to it. Figure one gives an example of a record based on one printed from the Database, with details as required by collectors. The design of the database is as simple as possible, so that users are not expected to understand computer programs, but anyone wishing to vary the records to meet their own particular needs would have to transfer them to another program. Postcard Collector's Database (PCD) is provided with a manual of 16 pages which is generally easy to understand, though it does state that you can export your records to another program quite easily. As most users of databases will know, this is usually an exaggeration, and I spent more than a day transferring the sample database from PCD to a format in another program which I preferred, and which can be seen in figure four below.
	Description Series Publisher Year Category Theme Artist Type Post date Post mark Piccadilly Circus, London London Street Scenes Allisons 1912 Topographical Street scenes Photograph 18/04/12 Battersea
	Fig.1 (based on printout from PCD for Windows). This shows only some of the fields, omitting others which would be probably used by a serious collector, but probably not used by a family historian. [The print-out from PCD for DOS was not as disjointed as this: the headings were set out consecutively, followed by the data for each record, each set out on two or three lines. - Ed]
	From figure one it will be seen that if one wishes to print out a fairly complete record of a card, or of a succession of cards, the headings for fields are displayed separately from their contents, which is not very explicit (unless I have missed part of the instructions). It is easier to display a file in columnar format, with less fields, as in figure two. For the genealogist this is not very satisfactory, since the fixed length fields are likely to be insufficient for the sort of data to be recorded.
	Description Bond Street Ealing Broadway Mary O'Moore	Series London Street Scenes London Street Scenes Leading Ladies no 101	Publisher Allisons Allisons W. Browning	Year 1912 1912 1902
	Fig.2 Sample records from PCD, in columnar layout with only four fields.
	In fact the record as it appears on the computer screen is much clearer than in a printout, unless it is exported to another format, as will be explained below. Regrettably I was not able to make a screen printout to show this. Twenty of the fields are for text, and ten have a maximum size of 25 characters. Larger fields are provided for description (75 chars.), series (50 chars.), and publisher (40 chars.) Even larger is the field for notes (250 chars.) but even this might sometimes be inadequate, depending on the kind of data to be included. For many of the frequently used items, such as names of publishers or artists, or category and condition, it would be convenient to use abbreviations. Not myself being a collector, I do not know whether conventional abbreviations are in common usage, as in philately, but this would seem desirable. In addition to the named fields of which there are examples in figures one and two above, there are six which are labelled as Sample one, etc. [User 1 etc in the DOS version- Ed], and these can be renamed by the user (for any data not covered elsewhere), as can all the fields. It seems probable that many collectors who choose to keep their records on computer would limit the data to a few essential fields, such as in figure two. A full record including all the fields provided might result in a notebook binder almost as bulky as the album of cards.
	There are two versions of this database, one running under DOS (v.3.1 or later) and the other under Windows 3.1 or 95, being sold separately at £19.95 each. In either case the program is supplied on a 3.5" high density disk, and as stated above there is a printed manual. This is duplicated on a disk file, PC1DOS.HLP or PC2WIN.HLP. Included in the Windows version is a help file in hypertext format, part of which is illustrated in figure three.
	Interrogating your database View Windows Quick Select Full select Printing records Importing and exporting records
	Fig.3 (selected from PCD) showing part of the Help file. Incidentally this file is headed AIndex@, but should be more correctly called "List of Contents". The lists of subjects under each subheading, and the subheadings themselves could easily be re-arranged in alphabetical order rather than sequentially as in the file. [The Help button in the DOS version enables users to click on a heading in a menu and jump straight to a heading in the text, moving up and down in the file from there - Ed.]
	Before having seen Postcard Collector's Database, I compiled my own database for postcards, with the emphasis on their genealogical aspect. The choice of fields was therefore rather different, and many of the details which a collector would consider important have been omitted. It would of course be possible to add fields from PCD to these records, just as it would be possible to use the Spare fields 1-6 [named User 1-6 in the DOS version - Ed] in PCD for the extra data, but there is one important feature in the program I use, *Alpha Five, which is advantageous. There are fields in Alpha* known as Memos, which may contain up to 5,000 characters, but the actual space occupied by the field depends upon the number of characters used, thus saving unused storage. This is particularly useful for fields such as that which I have labelled AMessage@, and which includes some or all of the text which has been written on the card. Also the names of the fields are mostly different from those in PCD, and they may be seen to the left of the fields in Figure four.
	FROM FOOT, Isaac NUMBER 1 TO Miss [M.] Dawe POSTMARK PLYMOUTH 1.45 a.m. MY 9 [1904?] ADDRESS Daughter of the Methodist Organist, Marytavy PICTURE Campbell Morgan (port.) SERIES Rotary photographic series 2141 SUBJECT MORGAN, Rev. [George] Campbell - port. (sepia, cracked) MESSAGE "Please let me know by card if you are useing the old Hymn book or the new." NOTES Isaac Foot, Liberal politician, was also a noted Wesleyan lay preacher. Mary Dawe was my mother, and her father was then organist at Mary Tavy Chapel, and later at the parish church.
	Fig.4 Sample record from Dawe/Rydings family collection, showing fields suitable for family history as recorded by Alpha Five database. Bearing in mind that this article is written mainly for indexers, it should be said that both these programs are able to be indexed on any field except the memo fields. For this reason a field labelled ASubject@ has been added, duplicating data in the APicture@ field which one might expect to find indexed, as seen in the example above. Both these programs are suitable for recording postcards in collections for a family historian. Alpha Five is rather more flexible, but is also much more expensive. If one uses Alpha Five as I do for most of my genealogical records, it obviously makes more sense to use it also for my postcards, but anyone not using a database for family history might well be inclined to adopt Postcard Collector's Database for its special purpose.

References	Postcard Collector's Database may be ordered from K & L Systems, PO Box 33, Worksop, Notts., S81 9YR. Ver.1 (DOS) and ver.2 (Windows) are each priced at £19.95. Alpha Four ver.6 (DOS) and Alpha Five ver.3 (Windows) are obtainable from Alpha Software Corporation, The Software Centre, Lee Mill Industrial Estate, Ivybridge, Plymouth, Devon, PL21 9PE, each priced at £99.95. Please note: The above information was correct at the time of original publication. FLHIG cannot vouch for current availability. For latest information on Alpha Five visit http://www.alphafive.com/


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