Our ref:26777

20 MAY 1996

COLLECTION CONFUSION
====================

Vernon Systems Limited, of Auckland, New Zealand, are the
developers of the museum management system called 'COLLECTION'.
The system was named in 1987.

Vernon Systems has been exclusively dedicated to COLLECTION for over
ten years, and has almost fifty sites with hundreds of users in the
US, Europe and Australasia.

We are gravely concerned that recently there have emerged two
competitive products which have names sufficiently similar to cause
confusion with COLLECTION.

Collections Inc./ Collections-Museum
------------------------------------
A company called 'Collections Inc.' based in Salt Lake City, UT, has
recently launched a package called Collections-Museum [TM] (based, we
understand, on a system developed for the National Cowboy Hall of
Fame).

At the recent Minneapolis AAM we were both exhibiting, and several
people told us that they had aproached the Collections Inc. stand
expecting to find Vernon Systems and COLLECTION. At the close of AAM
Collections Inc. had a drawer for a free system, and the winner
came to our stand to claim the prize!

There have been other products with also similar names, such as
'Collection Manager', that was seen in 1989, and 'Collection Master'
was announced on Museum-L in June 1995, from Jepal Inc. of Norman,
OK.

Vernon Systems is concerned about the confusion caused by closely
similar nomenclature. There is a likelihood that the reputation (good
or bad) from one product may be misascribed to another.

We have raised these concerns with the companies who have chosen
names close to our own, in the hope that they may alter them to be
more distinctive, and we are publishing this notice to advise the
museum community of this unfortunate situation.


Best Wishes

Bil Vernon
Managing Director

--
Vernon Systems Ltd.                 "COLLECTION -
P.O. Box 6909                        Is there really any better
Auckland, New Zealand                Collection Management System?"
Ph:    +(649) 302-3147
Fax:   +(649) 302-3150
Email: [log in to unmask]
       100033,673 (CompuServe)
WWW:   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vsl