As a Curator, I found that PastPerfect fitted our needs.  The staff was
there to answer questions (as well as people on this List).  The program is
cheap (so for a small museum it is excellent) and I found the program very
user friendly.  I worked and saw a few other programs, and we went with
PastPerfect.

John
SLC, UT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Huntley Project Museum" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 1:12 PM
Subject: Archives and PastPerfect


> I spent last year traveling the state working with small museums and
> organizations on archival projects.  Many of these institutions used
> PastPerfect and I had an opportunity to try it out in a variety of
> situations.  Here are some of my conclusions (note: I have not yet had a
> chance to work with the new 3.0 version and some problems may have been
> worked out):
>
> 1.  No matter what they say, this program was written by curators not
> archivists.  Overall the program is great--easy to use and flexible, but
the
> archives section seems to me to be the weakest.  For overall collection
> management, I would still recommend it and hope that future versions
become
> more archivally friendly.
>
> 2.  You can create finding aids from the program.  The program itself will
> print out a "finding aid", although it looks more like a cataloguing
> worksheet than the narrative styled finding aid we're used to.  I've also
> had success using the mail merge function in the reports section to create
a
> more standard finding aid (this requires careful entry of descriptive
> information in the fields) as well as completing NUCMC forms.  To do this,
I
> had to redefine some of the fields.  We also elected to skip the
box/folder
> entry and add this to the finding aid in the wordprocessing program--the
> PastPerfect section was simply too clunky and time consuming for
collections
> larger than 1-2 manuscript boxes.
>
> 3.  Numbering for archival collections is totally different from objects.
> For example, one archival collection could be made up of several different
> accessions (same donor over time) and one accession might contain several
> collections (the donor was caretaker for the records of several clubs,
ie.).
> The standard trinomial simply has less meaning for archives.  This results
> in serious problems in PastPerfect which wants accessions to equal
> collections.  The alternate used by many archives is to assign a second
> number based on the collection (manuscript collection 1 becomes mc1, etc.)
> This allows for a variety of accretions (accessions) but I've never
> understood why we need a number if we have a unique collection title--it's
> just one more thing to remember and makes no sense to patrons.  At one
time
> shelving by mc number was a useful locating tool but over time this falls
> apart as collections grow and have to be moved (or risk constantly
shifting
> everything down the shelves).
>
> 4.  Remember in archives that intellectual control and physical control
are
> two different things.
>
> 5.  The whole idea behind archival arrangement is to avoid item level
> description.  The only time I've ever done this (created a collection
> "calendar") was for the papers of a well known writer who had letters from
> other prominent authors.  Few collections merit the time necessary to do
> this.  If your series and/or folders are well titled this should be enough
> to point the researcher to right box and folder.  They can flip through a
> folder or two to find a specific item (looking for a 1932 receipt? check
out
> folder "Receipts, 1930-1934").  Even the one or two special items do not
> need a separate catalogue record--just mention them in your scope and
> content note or series description.
>
> 6.  The hierarchy links in PastPerfect are imperfect.  If you search the
> archives section and it's described in the fond, series, and item records
> you get three hits, with no indication until you click for more detail as
to
> what description level your looking at.  In most cases, we decided to only
> enter collection level records in PastPerfect (which is pretty much what
> you'd do if cataloguing in a library setting, for NUCMC, or any other MARC
> record).  This gets the researcher to the right collection, then they can
> use the finding aid to narrow the search.
>
> I could go on for a while but this is getting long and is probably not
> relevant to most of the list.  If you have specific questions, feel free
to
> contact me off-list.
>
> Anne L. Foster, CA (certified archivist)
> Director
> Huntley Project Museum of Irrigated Agriculture
> P O Box 353
> Huntley MT 59037
> phone: (406) 348-2533
> fax: (406) 348-2534
> email: [log in to unmask]
>
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