Okay, good morning and this morning we are very
pleased to be here with Dr. Roy Morgan in Albuquerque
New Mexico. Good morning, Roy. Good morning. Well,
I'd like to begin by asking you could you provide
an overview of who you are and where you work
or don't and the primary focus of your work either
past or present. Sure my name is Roy Morgan
native New Mexican, I live in Albuquerque, New
Mexico and I am retired. Um my work career
in instructional media is long and varied actually. I
started working part time at the Audiovisual center at New
Mexico State University when I was an undergrad, working
for Phil Dillard who was at that point working on
his doctorate at Indiana University um I had become interested
in instructional media and technology from, a friend of
mine who was a high school friend actually Alamogordo high
school when I was we youngster and he was a
student at Arizona State in the studying instructional media and
he used to talk to me about that. He
was a couple years older than I when he was
back from college. So when I was an undergrad
in New Mexico State University, I kind of checked
out the Audio visual center. Uh later when I
was a junior or something And met Phil Dillard and
he actually hired me to work there during two summers
. Well as it turns out Phil needed to go
back to Indiana to do his dissertation. So he
hired me as acting director of the Audio Official Center
for a year and a half while he was back
at Indiana. Then I went to Indiana to do
my doctoral work. And after I finished that,
then I went to work at the agency for instructional
technology in bloomington, which is a large nonprofit producer
distributor of instructional video materials, primarily broadcast television.
But I was hired as the manager for non broadcast
materials, which means film and video. And I
worked there from 1973 until 1988 and then I was
, did a number of things, but one of
those that was very enjoyable was as an adjunct faculty
member at indiana University in the instructional systems technology department
. And I taught the overview media course which was
required for all graduate uh students at in the I
. S. T. Department as well as for
students in the library science college that we're going through
uh certification to become a school library. When we
moved back to New Mexico, I was hired by
access innovations, which is a local database company.
I worked at Nice um for 4.5 years and then
I, because I had become so enamored of the
uh, computer database field, which was kind of
adjunct to instructional media and technology. I worked for
a couple of years for related company here in Albuquerque
called Essick, which was accompanied that catalogued literature in
the field of psychology and that was fascinating uh field
and I worked with the president and ceo of that
company here in Albuquerque. Um and then I decided
to retire. So that was kind of the end
of my career and instructional media and technology remind us
what does Nice Nice. Um stands for the National
Information Center for Educational Media. And I can talk
more about what we did if you like for me
to. Okay. Um Nice. Um was established
about 1966 at USC, the University of southern California
. Um and uh was established as a national and
later international database of educational media and materials. What
that means is that they catalogued started out as a
cooperative catalog, but then later became a catalogue of
all producers and distributors, um, extent materials that
existed that were available to schools and libraries and universities
into corporations and businesses. Um and the database was
purchased by access innovations in the late 70s and was
moved here to Albuquerque. And when I was working
at Nice, and it It contained somewhat over 400,000
individual biblical graphic records, cataloging somewhat over 600,000 individual
media items. And our job was to keep that
up to date to continually add items. And we
did that from distributor catalogs. Um, and then
, uh, the original form of its distribution was
in print catalogs. And in the old days,
some of you may remember our balcony published catalogs and
they were multi volume, huge catalogs of print descriptors
of these media items, and school libraries and media
directors would use these indexes to find extent materials.
So if you were looking up science materials for third
grade and you wanted filmstrips, you wanted films or
videos or whatever you'd look in these catalogs, you
would find a descriptor and then you would find out
who distributed that material and then you go to that
distributor to get access to them. And actually when
access innovations purchased the cattle of the database, one
of the first catalogs they published with our balco was
in association with the fact um well eventually these catalogues
became so massive that it became more cost effective to
distribute them on cd and online. And that's one
of the things that access innovations did and what I
continued to do. Um uh One of the highlights
of the work that access innovations did was to work
on the indexing system. And to do that you
need a sarah's. Most people don't think much about
indexing when you're dealing with a database, but in
order to search for materials really need accurate logical system
of descriptors. And that's why you have uh indexers
and you have editors who not only write these descriptors
based on catalogs from the from the producers and distributors
, but you have people who then assign these descriptors
. Well you need to have a logical set of
descriptors that is uniform across the database. And most
specialized databases have these and these are called Sarai Fassero's
is not like roaches the SARS but these are these
are asses. And one of the things that I'm
most proud of is that we created the nice of
the serous which is a uh a set of descriptors
which are assigned to the nice um database. And
this is a highly organized uh systematic um set of
words, terms that are assigned to these These$400,000
Geographic Records. Um Now you would think well why
can't you just do a blunt force um Keyword searching
? Well you can do that but if you have
these descriptors and you're more likely to come up with
logical results and search engines use these. You just
don't know that. And so often what is done
. And one of the things that access innovations did
is to create computer programs that use machine aided indexing
. And these are complex algorithms which actually used these
sorry with these computer algorithms that use computers to do
the indexing so that humans don't have to do all
the indexing. These are often reviewed by humans but
the indexing is sometimes done by computers along with human
health. Um So that was a great fun project
when I was nicer. Mhm. One of the
other things that I'm most proud of when I was
with with a I. T. The agency for
instructional television later in technology. Um Just a brief
word, A I. T. Uh in its
day in the sixties, seventies and eighties was the
premier largest uh producer and distributor of instructional video materials
. And some of you may remember what that was
, but in those days Um 90 of the schools
had video equipment in their classrooms, in their buildings
And it is estimated that 30 of teachers used instructional
video on a regular basis, and a. IT
. was the primary distributor of those materials to those
teachers and classrooms. Yes, there were other major
distributors like Great Plains out of Lincoln Nebraska and others
. Um And this is not material that is uh
that you think of like electric. Uh Now the
name is casing by Sesame street and so forth.
This is the material that's broadcast directly into the classrooms
during the day. Um, and in those days
there were huge networks uh, that were established and
maintained by states and those who were organized into regional
networks, um, particularly east of the Mississippi on
the west Coast. And they were particularly strong in
areas like the South East states, where those states
found that it was very cost effective to have instructional
television materials broadcast into the schools that could supplement their
teachers, who may not have been especially adept at
teaching subjects, all the subjects such as science and
mathematics and social studies and um, language and all
the, all the subjects that are expected in the
classroom. Um, an it provided a huge catalog
of all of these materials, but they were also
innovators in creating consortium of, in states that could
gather funds and agree on projects that needed to be
provided that had not been provided here to fore.
And so they would gather sons, usually in the
in the area of hundreds or even a few million
dollars, create the projects to the demands of these
consortia and then provide them to those consortia states,
I think more importantly, and why I was very
proud of is that a I. T. Was
at the forefront, in fact, was the first
producer distributor that allowed off air recording rights. And
so we were uh, very influential and influence in
helping to craft the copyright laws that allowed for off
air recording. Uh, we allowed all of our
products to be off air recorded. So that led
to really a mushrooming of uh, schools demanding VcRS
in those days so that they could time shift programs
and use them when they wanted to record them during
the night or record them at one time during the
day and then have teachers use them later. One
of the things we did in celebration of a.
I. T. S. 25th anniversaries was to
hire bob Carlisle To go to 106 locations in 12
different states and to survey how instructional television was being
used in those different locations and bob. This was
an anecdotal survey, but it showed how important um
programming equipment and support was and showed how important this
was not only to teachers and administrators but to students
and how vastly uh influential instructional television was in that
period. And this is really before computers became so
um uh integral to education today. But this was
the era when video was replacing film and became much
easier to use than film and much more widespread.
So those are the kind of the things that I
did in my career and things that I was most
proud of. How did you get interested in this
field? Well, as I mentioned, I had
a friend, frank smith who was a classmate of
mine at Alamogordo High School and who went to Arizona
State and was studying educational media there and he used
to come home during a couple of summers uh,
and he was talking to me about educational media.
And so I, I explored that, visited the
audiovisual center at New Mexico State University and thought,
hey, this is neat stuff. And so,
uh, talking to Phil Billard, who is the
director of the Audiovisual Center at New Mexico State about
his experiences at indiana University. Um, just convinced
me that was the area for me and I've never
regretted it for a minute. Um, so I
moved from New Mexico across country to indiana, never
having been there, never having visited Indiana University and
absolutely fell in love with the people there, the
faculty, the campus. And I have loved every
minute of my career. This is not on the
list. But who were some of your faculty mentors
at indiana? Uh, two in particular? Um
, uh Denny Pet was one of the dearest men
I ever ever knew, especially in the courses dealing
with photography, but others as well. And then
he was a friend. He and his wife jean
invited all of us over for meals at their house
and other social gatherings. And another person who was
extremely inferential was harvey fry, who was a master
an artist in graphic arts and graphic design. And
I think my love of, Of the printed page
, my love of images on two and 3 dimensional
surfaces. My love of anything that has to do
with design ethic comes from Harvey who always said that
it's not the equipment you use but it's the thought
that goes into how you create that that thing that's
more important. He came before the days of computer
. I can only imagine what he would have done
with a computer because his artistry with a pen and
a ruler and a razor blade was absolutely phenomenal.
So the tool was insignificant. It's what you did
with that tool that was important and that's what I
learned from Harvey and we'll never forget. Are there
any other people who had an impact on your professional
growth? Um Yeah my years, my 14.5 years
at A. I. T. The agency for
instructional technology uh were very important. Ed Cohen,
who is executive director, he founded a. I
. T. Um was the executive director while I
was there. Um was a monument in the field
of instructional technology, instructional television technology. Um Have
great respect for Ed. He was a tough taskmaster
but a brilliant man in shaping what instructional television technology
was in that period. Um formed an incredible board
of directors of state Superintendents of education state um Secretaries
of education who came together to direct this agency was
able to get people to to fund their money's pull
their monies to fund projects brought in brilliant producers and
directors to create materials. And I think helped change
american education. By the way instructional television was created
and produced and then distributed. Um So working for
Ed was a great honor um that people I worked
with were obviously an influence but he was he was
probably the greatest. Um This may sound boastful but
it's not meant that way I most of my career
has been at the national level. Um I think
I decided late in my career working on my doctorate
and um I must say I finished my my academic
program and started to work at it before I finish
my dissertation. And it was very generous after I
had received notice that I better finish my dissertation or
else to finish my dissertation while I was at it
. And so by then it was pretty much decided
that I would not go into academia. I had
already been working at I. T. For three
or four years and I think going into academia at
that period after having worked in industry so to speak
was probably going to be awkward. And and by
then I was really I guess kind of spoiled because
I had been working and I feel that I really
liked and going into teaching full time. Working in
that environment didn't seem right for me. Plus I
was seeing what it was like working as I said
in a national arena, working for a I.
T. Which was an american Canadian company um influencing
policy that had national dimensions uh creating distributing materials that
had an effect on Children across uh North America,
both Canada United States um really was it was fun
but it was it seemed very important. It was
very important Later on as I became director of marketing
, not just of audio visual marketing but of of
marketing for the whole company. And then later I
was director of marketing and creative services, which meant
that the editors, the writers of all the pre
materials, the teacher's guides worked under me as well
. Um So the work that we were doing on
behalf of Children in America of teachers and administrators and
media and instructional television administrators throughout America, North and
North America was very heavy stuff and that's kind of
hard to, to shake. And I really love
that kind of work. And when I was at
nice, um the same thing applied here, we
were working on a database that catalogues materials from mainly
North America, but from really all around the world
. But this database was being used by people,
you know internationally and we were helping teachers and librarians
and media professionals and all kinds of environments to find
materials that they wouldn't have found otherwise. And that's
the great feeling. It's a great sense of accomplishment
when you can help other professionals find materials that help
them do their job better and more importantly help kids
or other learners learn better uh and and how professionals
do their job better and there's no better feeling than
that. So that's you know that's the accomplishments that
I'm very proud of. How do you want to
be remembered within this profession? Well if you haven't
found by now I think what I what I want
to be remembered by is what I've already said.
I I'm very proud of the work I did at
a I. T. Very proud of the work
I did at at Nice. Um um I guess
I want to be remembered. Buy in a very
small way. The the influence that I've had on
helping uh influence how media and materials have been used
in american education whether it's through policy getting instructional video
recorded and used um getting it priced well so that
it's uh Affordable when we were at eight um getting
it available uh in terms of uh information when I
was at Nice um um Just getting that knowledge out
there and making it accessible and available to everybody.
Yeah destroyed. I have one final question that's no
on here that I want to ask you earlier what
was your involvement in the during your career? My
involvement is A U. C. T. Is
I was always a member. Uh And and when
I was both at A. C. T.
I'm sorry when I was at A. I.
T. And at Nice um we always exhibited at
um A. C. T. And the conferences
I was always there, I always went to special
events when I you sponsor them at A. C
. T. Um uh E. C. T
. Actually relocated to the building shortly after I left
A. I. T. So I was very
proud of that kind of connection which although happened after
I left A. I. T. I was
very excited about that. Um So I felt a
great affinity to A. C. T. It
was my professional organization and uh very proud of the
work it did. Mhm. Can you last words
you'd like to leave us with? Uh I don't
think so. I'm very pleased to have this opportunity
to talk. Hope. It's provided some insight to
uh maybe some entities such as A. I.
T. And Nice um that you may not have
known much about hope. I've provided some insight but
thank you for this opportunity. Thanks. Okay.