Just to clarify how the Archive section of PastPerfect works. It does not
require that you create a separate record for each piece of paper or
document. You may want to do that for some special documents, but generally
you would catalog a group of items as one record and then use the Container
List option to describe the individual items. When creating an Archive
record with PastPerfect, remember to select the appropriate “Level of
Description” for that catalog record, be it, item, folder, series,
collection, etc.
For example, if you are cataloging a collection of corporate records you
would create one catalog record for that collection giving it a description
on the “Scope and Content/Abstract” field such as:
“Corporate records of the Happy Toy Company. Including minutes of board
meetings, financial statements, and toy catalogs from 1955-1975.”
Then use the Container List button. This gives you a screen where you can
describe the various series or sub-series in the collection. You do not
have to assign a separate catalog number to each item or series when using
the container list option.
PastPerfect also allows you to do multi-level linking. This means that
catalog records may be linked together in a hierarchical system of
relationships. For more details on this please look at the PastPerfect Demo
or download the tutorial from the website on archival cataloging.
Brian L. Gomez
Operations Manager
Pastime Software Company
610 326 2650
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Juliette Rogers
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 10:38 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Past Perfect and Archives
Dear listers,
We have a question I haven't seen discussed in relation to entering archival
collections in PP. PP requires an accession and object number for archives,
plus a description... and it seems as if the intention is that you should
catalogue each piece of paper or document on its own. It is our consulting
archivist's experience (backed up by the rest of the staff's anecdotal
evidence) that archives aren't catalogued to that level of detail. They are
grouped by topic, time, etc, and put into folders by grouping, boxed beyond
that... but assigning catalogue numbers is not part of our experience. How
to other institutions handle this? We would like to use PPS for archives,
and are already working around the terminology probelms so that we can have
a computerized database at our disposal, but this seems contrary as well as
really labor intensive.
Thanks for any and all answers!
Juliette Rogers
Collections Manager and Registrar
Stephen Phillips Trust House
Salem, MA
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