>My name is Jim Pfeiffenberger and I work part time with a small community
>museum in Seward, Alaska.  I have two questions.  First, we are planning
>to buy museum database software for the Mac platform.  Does anyone have
>any experience/opinions on "Accession" by Oak Tree Software Specialists?
>This is the program we are very close to buying.  Ant other ideas for the
>Mac platform?

Jim,

I have looked at the demo disc for Accession and while it looked good, I
had some big questions about it. I have done our database using FileMaker
Pro and am very happy with it, for the way we use it.

The two things that put me off Accession were its price (1/4 my annual
budget) and its proprietariness ( is there such a word?). By that I mean
that no one but me would be able to use it. FileMaker Pro is such a
standard on campus that I can easily teach work studies to use it to input,
and faculty to use it for research. Upgrades should be easy too--where will
Accession be in two years? Accession also seemed to have a lot of
interrelational features that we don't seem to need.

If you have questions about our database, you can reach me off list.
Ivy Fleck Strickler                     Phone 215-895-1637
Drexel University                       Fax 215-895-4917
Nesbitt College of Design Arts          [log in to unmask]
Philadelphia, PA 19104

"Never forget that life is like a Fellini movie, and you're getting to see
it for free."