Dear Pat,
I am the Deputy Curator of Dartmouth Museum and we have just
invested in a new Catalogue program called PastPerfect. Basically I did
some homework through the mda cataloging Software Survey on the net and this
one came out as being cheaper, modern, user friendly etc. It was however
American and had little exposure in this Country at the time.
I got a Demo disc and played for a while and then got the mda views
on it which were complimntery but raised a few questions. Then on to the
American builders of the program and persuaded them that there was a
potential UK and European market. We bought the program for this Museum and
in parallel I worked with the Americans to Anglicise it and acted as a
beta-tester for the result it was also the time to sort out all of the mda
queries. We now have the finished product which is really excellent and
into which we migrated the records from the earlier version. The company
claims they can transfer records from other systems if necessary but in the
case you quote that would not be necessary.
I have the Demo disc for the new version which I can send you if you
are interested, it was due to go to the Margaret Harrison of mda for their
views on this one but I feel sure she can wait a few days. Incidently both
Charterhouse and Godalming museums use the earlier version of PastPerfect
and they too may wish to use the new Demo disc! This system has the added
advantage that using a facility called 'scatter/gather' you can put in
records at home and then bring a floppy to the museum and load the work you
have done without disturbing anything else. It works well and we use it
routinely as we too are loading data for the first time. There is also a
facility for directly creating a web page and including selected records -
not in use here yet - and images obviously form part of the cataloguing.
Do give me a call on the old fashioned telephone if you wish. 01803
832105.
I look forward to hearing from you. Regards.
David Lingard.
