Does a database have to be computerized?

No. A database can be manual, like a phone book or a shopping list. For it to be a database it needs to be structured or organised. If you take a phone book, although there are thousands of names in it, you can usually find a phone number you are looking for very quickly. This is because the phone book is structured and organised. So it does not have to be on a computer to be a database. A manual database can be computerised. The data would be entered into a computer.