Michael Traugott and Erik Austin

00:00 My name is Eric. Koston 76 years old and I'm here with my former colleague in my truck in Ann Arbor walked away since the university has been closed now for a little over a month and all of this stuff, you know becoming somewhat familiar.

00:31 I'm Mike Trout. I'm 75 years old and I'm actually still working at the Consortium under unusual circumstances. Obviously, we're both in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

00:50 A long time ago when I was an undergraduate. I got pointed to graduate school at Michigan because this book has been published the American voting which revolutionized political science and this book was based upon a series of national surveys about voting behavior in the United States and the people who produced the surveys and analyze the data wanted to make them more generally available one person in particular Warren Miller.

01:24 And he had no idea to form an association of universities and starting initially political scientist who would also wanted utilize the same day that so he created the into University Consortium for political research.

01:45 And started to summer program to train clinical scientist Under The Heading of the Consortium about how to use the service.

01:57 And

02:00 I was when I was a graduate student. I was looking for a way to earn some money to keep me alive. And so one opportunity was to go to work for the Consortium and that's when I met Eric.

02:19 Well as Mike said

02:24 I like he came to the University of Michigan to attend graduate school in my case. It was graduate school in history. I've been pointed to a three universities by my undergraduate faculty mentor.

02:46 I hadn't heard much about any of these three. They were William and Mary UNC Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan.

02:59 I decided that.

03:02 I didn't want to live in the south at all. This was the height of the Civil Rights Movement Pettus Bridge march on the state capitol in in Alabama and Bull Connor. It's dog dogs and hoses.

03:24 What I knew very little about the University of Michigan. I learned some harsh realities right away, which was how expensive out-of-state tuition was & like Mike. I look for some something to earn a little bit of money. I was working at the the psychology department at tending rafts to put a little bit of bread on the on the table and my major Professor here at the University of Michigan long-deceased the name Sydney fine said that he'd heard of a job at

04:12 The Institute for social research that was about his historical stuff and so I thought of you and and the you want to go and talk to them so I went and talked to the fellow that was recruiting name was Jerry Club my careers

04:39 So he asked me in the job interview. What what skills did I have and I thought for a longer than I should have instead. Not really, but I do know how to use the library and he was desperate enough to continue the interview and he said so what are you doing now? I told him I was tending rats for the psych department and he says how much were they paying you?

05:09 And I said the $2 an hour.

05:14 Club said I'll pay you $2.10 an hour. If you come to work here took me about 8 seconds to say sign me up. So it's there was work with the Consortium been part of the survey Research Center at the University of Michigan.

05:34 Who was the very interesting Enterprise Eric and I got involved by 6 at appointment transition when they were thinking about moving beyond surface, but still with a focus on American politics and the institute for social research generally is Operation. It depended on Branson.

06:02 From foundations and from government agencies. So they they they Warren and Cherry thought about ways in which they could expand the Holdings of what they call the archive by looking at other basic collections of American political data and

06:26 That's when they moved on to tell me level election returns and roll call votes in the US Congress all of which peroxide.

06:38 And from there, we we moved into digitizing. I don't know we didn't use that term digitizing than it was.

06:48 In registering door or some some form of that that word and one of the next projects was to digitize basic data from the US Census now seems hard to believe that the Census Bureau which started using a computer technology have a sort in the 1890 census never produced any digital files for four people to use that instead published these thick volumes of Statistics so that anyone who wanted to use look at that information would have to

07:38 Key all of that information in so we we proposed.

07:48 Digitizing that information and the did it for all the census from 1790 up through 1960 by by which time the Census Bureau had heard from enough for Scholars and and others of the value of Digital Data and began to release some of the some of the mystics in

08:24 What you're talking about are describing is digitizing actually involved. I can't remember whether it was a purchase or alone of all the published volumes from the senses and there was a key punch that you punch machine with the volumes open from page to page tables of data and they punch these returns back to the car now a days it would have been some scanning process that would exist through these volumes, you know, instantaneously virtually instantaneously, but this was a very labor-intensive process at the time.

09:17 We had The Misfortune. I I always thought to be a moved out of is our into a downtown Ann Arbor office building.

09:29 Mike and I were in part of the Consortium staff that was moved out the that warehouse in the basement no windows, but we we were the first occupants of this space and one of the requirements that we made up the the landlord was to soundproof one of the rooms because the noise of a key punches.

09:59 Chunking through cardboard which was the point guard was was deafening those of us who have to go into that room to to do our own keep on would always try to go when the professional key punch operator to wear on brake because that's the only way we could keep our keep our sanity R Kappa key punch operators was up to eight people at one time and we moved on from Project to project thanks to Branson contracts from such places as the National Science Foundation the National Endowment for humanities the Ford Foundation cetera.

10:53 Are learn more about Digital Data and certainly about Punch Cards than is known to be healthy to a human being at one point is estimated that over a two and a half decades. So for these kinds of data in registering projects, we produce roughly 2 million Punch Cards, and we were not at all unhappy to see another form of storage and distribution over take the punch card.

11:33 Certainly, those those those staff who had to carry these boxes of Punch Cards around were quite relieved when we were able to move to Magnetic Tape storage and transmission medium.

11:56 Is first of all this was way before the internet and there was no wiring. So every time they were transferred from books at the punch cards. They have to be physically woo someplace for entry. So there was a tremendous logistical operation involving people who was primary responsibility was either to move these boxes of punch cards from the city center building 2 is r or from City Center building Civic Center, which was in another location on campus.

12:39 It was

12:41 It was a purely physical kind of activity.

12:47 And those who were recharge with this responsibility to this day, I think I blame that job on the back problems that they they continue to have throughout their throughout their lives. Now. It's my other other forms of storage in and distribution until you'll hear about this from other icpsr employees that you're interviewing. Now those physical media are almost completely ameliorated and people

13:37 Researchers students get their get their data by logging into the website and downloading the files directly onto their laptop or desktops, but that was a completely unheard of

13:57 When Mike and I started in the mid-60s.

14:03 I can't really quickly. I just wanted to ask for the two of you to use that you and I language Sunset of saying Mike and I say you and I and speak directly to each other you're doing great. Thanks.

14:24 Because I was a graduate student but the Fire part of mine ethological training was to participate in the summer program, which the Consortium I think they started maybe in 63. I was in the I was in the summer of 66.

14:47 And

14:50 Part of what Jerry introduced to the summer program was courses in quantitative history. Did you actually participate in the summer Friday? And then I acted more or less as a teaching assistant for Jerry and one of the things that

15:18 We had to contend with was contestation for.

15:28 Space on University's Mainframe computer and through hard lessons. We determined that the best time to to go to the Computing Center and I submitted our requests for information was midnight. And so here are all these quite a number of the Beast.

15:54 Graduate students and the junior faculty members coming to learn something about quantitative history, and I had to drop them out to commuting Center at midnight to have a Fighting Chance.

16:17 That was a much. It was a much different world in terms of the data processing when the summer program started when I participating there might have been 40 or 50 people in the entire program and there would be maybe two or three different Court courses being run simultaneously.

16:39 By some bizarre stroke of Fortune in December to help out the summer program because they have a sudden resignation.

16:53 And I can I know that now the summer program has about 75 courses and they have about a thousand participants from all over the world. So the scope of activities has changed dramatically within the Consortium.

17:16 It's a it's a membership Organization for which colleges and universities and now some nonprofits are members.

17:25 When we started

17:27 There might have been all the

17:31 Well or 15 members its initial now, they're almost 800 but but rounding up these members.

17:42 In early days was really quite an activity Mavericks that we're out on the plane and Warren Miller was the cowboy that had the round them up. One of the things that I did in the late 1990s was conducted oral history interview many of the founders of us are

18:11 Commemoration of 50th anniversary of Ohio

18:15 And one of the people that I interviewed wins for Miller and he looked a little shamefaced idli this once again in the 90s 1990s when he says I have an admission when we first started we had 19 universities that the signed up as members and somebody asked me. Well, what are your aspirations? How many how many universities do you think you can convince to join up and pay a membership fee? And he said though, I be happy with 30 or 40 seeing almost 800 now would have been completely flummoxed m

19:08 But that was largely that the girls was largely due to his efforts and and the growing awareness.

19:16 Political science in sociology nomics

19:25 So

19:27 May the founding principle was that

19:32 No data set is ever completely used up by its original investigate and that if you could make these data generally available to others they would find uses for them for their own studies and sometimes a study would take on value because it was deposited along with other similar data sets. And so the the combination of different sources would enhance the research utility of a particular data set.

20:11 So that was that was the founding principle.

20:16 The summer program was really kind of a proselytizing Activity 2.

20:29 Whydo I don't need to take that will let it ring out and then you can go ahead.

20:35 The summer program was in the sense kind of a proselytizing activity for the archiving business or function on its own.

20:56 One of the questions that we submitted than you thought would be would be useful was so what did you learn at icpsr that you wouldn't have learned elsewhere at least that time. Well, that's an easy one for me to answer because I wouldn't have I wouldn't have had any opportunity and history graduate program for learn anything about the computers digital information statistics. Like like you I talked to various various courses the statistics that is recommended for four people people like me was offered by the sociology Department. The statistics Department that still believe the black balls and white balls was all you really needed to let you know to do.

21:56 To do statistics

21:58 So

22:00 The technology

22:04 That what I learned was because of working in in and responsible for learning learning things that I would have never learned.

22:19 In another context unfortunately, the

22:27 The march of technology has continued even even passed my retirement in 2006. And now I'm very much out of it from knowledge standpoint. The reason that Mike and I are that you and I are here. Of course, is that the

22:49 My ancient computer wouldn't wouldn't have stayed connected to the internet long enough to to to connect it. I needed to get a email from you this morning as a matter of fact and I got on and and it immediately crashed and I had those

23:07 Shut down and walk it back in which would have been fatal for this this kind of.

23:14 Exchange so interesting for me and my current stick with the Consortium is that we have a variety of scholarships that we give to people who apply to the summer program. And of course this current cohort of graduate students has no idea who these people are. But Eric and I met all of these people are almost all of these people during the course of our employment. So we have scholarships in the name of Warren Miller and Jerry Clower. We've already discussed them.

23:52 But we have scholarships in the name of Clifford clogged toilet clogged and we also have a lecture Series in the summer program that's entitled The Blaylock lectures Eric and I knew Ted Blaylock, but

24:14 I remember giving you a reference to your own experiences early on that when we met Ted Blaylock was served on the Consortium Council hemostat active opponents of the war in Vietnam, and he would frequently talk about that when we got together for these Council music.

24:38 Another council member who who shared those political views was Charles Tilly sociologist / historian. It was largely due to his education that contract with the branch of the US defense defense department was not requested for Renewal and

25:07 At 1 at one point several federal agencies applied to icpsr for membership among the CIA and

25:25 We floated the idea of a membership for the CIA and our European member institutions if the roof because they had no return them down and

25:55 Everything was better without them. So.

26:06 Warren was a promoter of the election studies and then of encouraging investigators another country to adopt the election study design to collect similar data for comparative analysis.

26:29 And the barn members were an important part of the development of the archived but the political systems were very difference in these European countries said they were in the United States and so

26:47 At one level they were very interesting and important partners and data collection, but they were at another level more concerned about the resources necessary since about the archive then the American University.

27:07 L a few of these non us member institutions ever developed anything approaching icpsr.

27:25 I know.

27:27 At one point. I was foolish enough to accept an invitation to attend the conference in Moscow. Not the Idaho version, but the the Russian version and the conference was going to be in the first week of December why I

27:44 Didn't get out of my house and look up whether it's beyond me, but the

27:57 I got there.

27:59 That was just going to

28:03 Trim up with various people and was told that I had a cock that I had to give so I had to quickly figure out what what I would say. Thankfully. I I remembered something about dates and the the date of my talk was going to be December 6th, which I then

28:28 Used as the beginning of the Russian army pushing the Germans back from Lost in followed by December seven in the we all know about December 7th.

28:50 The temperature never got above 0 and I didn't have I didn't have any any in here whatsoever for venturing outside. I had I had to do.

29:07 And it was at one of our

29:11 Outings we were standing on a bluff overlooking the whole city and there was a vendor there selling selling headgear.

29:23 I was fortunate enough to take my wife to to on this song on this trip and she immediately bought a silver fox. I don't know how much and but it was enough to start with me. And I said to the vendor. Do you have anything that's less expensive. So yeah, I've got one that spoke perfect English. I've got one that is a rabbit fur and it's only

29:55 This amount of money Isis. Okay, fine. I'll take it. Would you like rubles or dollars need started laughing uses? You've got to be kidding dollars of cord.

30:07 So

30:09 We never did get a membership out of the Soviet Union. I guess they they weren't in.

30:25 Strong enough political position entertained number of Russian historians and and the social scientists and they were all interested in joining, but they couldn't come up with a couple thousand hard US dollars.

30:42 And they didn't know this vendor of the year who who had well well more than 2,000.

30:53 When I think that was an interesting part of our work, especially

31:00 Aspen relatively tender age that we were was what a Cosmopolitan Buick Abus of social science.

31:11 In terms of the people who were drawn to Ann Arbor to the Consortium and the institute for social research and what became the center for clinical studies.

31:22 And then I think for each if I send slightly different ways the opportunities for travel that we would never have to experience the other one absolute sitting members or

31:38 Those kinds of activities. We also entertained as interns half-a-dozen people from largely from Europe who would come to learn how we did things and we have two people from France.

32:03 One from Germany one from the Netherlands one from Norway and one from Sweden and they typically would stay almost a year. We didn't have to pay anything for these for these people and we showed them how we were doing things and use the money on projects and we're

32:28 Mutually beneficial association that we had so

32:36 Again, it was related to the way because they would go home and they would do their own networks establish archives in their own countries. And so this International network of data archives was established by this process of visiting Ann Arbor.

33:02 And a couple of them where we're able to bring their families.

33:07 Norway brought his wife and two two kids and the two kids spend a year in Ann Arbor Public Schools, of course, their English was probably better than most of the native-born Americans given the test. That's the pattern second language not anything not anything else. So what they were they were delighted to

33:40 Spend time here. I saw him less than a year ago. He was in Ann Arbor for another conference. I don't know if you remember that name.

33:56 Trumpsta is in Norway was where he was where he was faced. So

34:05 I'm one of the questions that was that was there seems a little love.

34:10 Whimsical but I'm going to put your feet to the fire. What did you think you were going to be when you grow up?

34:26 Well, when I came down Arbor, I had a very clear idea of what I was going to be had done my undergraduate work at Princeton. I work this research assistant Gallup. I thought I was going to go back and work at the Gallup organization and I was going to go into some kind of public opinion research.

34:50 I never thought I was going to be a college professor and

34:58 I meant my wife working for construction and

35:03 For a long time. We thought we were leaving Ann Arbor. Anytime we had we were married with children in school. We still thought we were going away.

35:17 This turned out to be the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor turned out to be a great place to work you settled and obviously we never what did you think you were going to be but you know, I was certain that I was going to be a lawyer.

35:33 I remember having taken a yet.

35:36 Attempt to call the kuder preference to read a book and my baseball skills weren't good enough. So I always chose a read a book. Well at the end of the test, they towed it up all the answers and said the reason the various possibilities that that you have. One of once was being a lawyer not Third Base the major Professor that I listen to it the Dartmouth Where I Was An undergraduate ask me that question. What are you going to do after you graduate hear my voice.

36:29 Warriors just read boring stuff.

36:33 Becoming a story and you'll you'll be able to read interesting stuff. That was that will challenge your mind. So really for the first for five years.

36:53 What I would do what I would become what it turned out that I would become and Astorian I would do historical research. I published several books and quite a few quite a few articles and you forced a lot of regretted the the lack of opportunity for for teaching.

37:35 Jerry Club said that his major Professor with at the University of Washington where he got his PhD in hands. I'm sure that you don't fall.

37:58 We're out for what it's worth.

38:00 I can tell you that when I was a senior in college.

38:06 And I didn't really know any better.

38:09 I applied to law school in the and the professor for whom I wrote my senior thesis said don't go to law school was this was this a union senior all faculty voter and he knew that I've been doing this work and he said you need to go to the University of Michigan together PhD in political science and no matter what it is that you end up doing. It'll be useful to you in any kind of person.

38:53 Well, I don't know about that anytime soon.

38:59 They're still really only room in the in the academy for the kind of skills that you and I end up working at the General Motors or Chrysler Corporation or or what-have-you, but they consider themselves very odd ducks in that in that environment. They can practice the but they don't get ahead.

39:38 In that environment without a business training and then business experience, so

39:47 Set a reminder.

39:49 We're not right you have any last thoughts to share with each other to wrap up?

39:58 No, we haven't seen you know, this has been interesting because we haven't really seen each other in years and

40:06 I you know, I told you I went to work at the Consortium in January and

40:13 The Consortium won this set of interviews because they got an award from the Library Association.

40:22 So I got an email and I said well everybody got an email and they said there's a possibility to do these interviews. We do them in Paris. Who do you want to do your interview?

40:35 And and I thought about Eric immediately.

40:41 Because I thought

40:45 Eric and I have this history and experience that probably nobody else in the Consortium has we might have thought of another person or two that we worked with but so it's been a great opportunity for her and meet the connect.

41:04 Yeah, I would say I was surprised to get your get your phone call but like a lot of historians. I really wish the telling of tales and so I would say I was happy to agree to what you doing this and only apologize for the lameness of my home Computing environment that brings us.

41:38 Contradiction to Federal Regulations within two feet of each other, but that's not going to be a pediment to do archiving II agree to have our

42:02 Yeah, it's not an issue. I'm going to stop the recording right now.