2005 Proceedings - Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War

Massachusetts and he enlisted on this date. How do you know who it is? You don’t have a unique name
and Bob has expressed that has been a problem.
National Committee on Graves Registration Chairman Bob Lowe
In my suggestions again on page twenty some of the things that we will be looking into are that
the database could be searched for a.k.a. numbers, would be searchable. So you wouldn’t have to put
into a separate, individual entry for each a.k.a., also known as, surname. But to respond to Brother
Twining’s request, I have also put down there, if a Department, a Camp or an individual submitter was
given an I.D., number there would be a coded number, so you are not giving out personal information.
If that I.D. number could be put on each record as it is inputted and the National Graves Registration
Officer would be the only one that would have the key to that, to know that submitter, if that was
acceptable, this is something we could look at is an I.D. number rather than personal information and it
would track back to the submitter.
Commander-in-Chief Stephen Michaels
If I understand some of these items being brought up are really specific and are covered by the
umbrella of recommendations that you have made on page twenty for the benefit of the Brothers here.
Alright. Brother Knight.
Glenn Knight, Department of Pennsylvania
I just wanted to comment that what we are doing here is giving the Committee the authority to do
their job and I think we should do that, but in the process we should also be giving thought that as the
Orders original Webmaster, as I recommended at that time to make sure that the databases that we are
using are compatible one, with the other and that we have a standard, by which we operate the entire
program of electronic communications. We need to keep on that continuously. If we correct this one
problem why don’t we correct them all if we have other problems and I think that it should be a little
more comprehensive then just this one committee. But I think this needs to be approved.
Commander-in-Chief Stephen Michaels
Okay. Are there any objections to the recommendations?
National Counselor James B. Pahl
As amended.
Commander-in-Chief Stephen Michaels
Pardon me. As amended. Brother Orr.
Past Commander-in-Chief Richard Orr, Department of Pennsylvania
Commander-in-Chief, not an objection, not a change, just a point of information. The current
database is not written in Access. It is a custom written database and a combination of Visual C Plus,
some minor parts of Cobalt and other parts of it in Machine Language. It took three years to write it. It
is not something off the shelf that you are going to be able to use. And that is why it is difficult to
change it. Because when you change one thing you are affected several things.
National Committee on Graves Registration Chairman Bob Lowe
I understand what you are saying. We are having difficulty and there are many
recommendations out there. Another one is that you would gain a list, say it was a cemetery, of every
Civil War Veteran in that Cemetery. You now have to click on each individual one to bring up the
actual data on them. But there is nowhere that you can view this in spreadsheet format. Say you were
doing a Cemetery and you wanted to go up and double check, there is no way that you could just print
out a sheet and take it with you to check the data that is there. That is something that would be
desirable.
Commander-in-Chief Stephen Michaels
Alright. We will hear one more comment from the brother in the back.
Kirby Bauman, Department of Ohio
I just wanted to make one point. The copy of the database that I was given is Microsoft Access
and it was an obsolete form of Microsoft Access when it was given to me. And every time you go to
duplicate the disk, it becomes up with an icon that says you are using an obsolete form, do you want to
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