I have been watching this thread with some interest.  We have been
developing a collections management system based on a relational data
model for the last four years.  The standard it is based around is the
one created for the National Humanities database by the Canadian
Heritage Infromation Network.  This was adopted partly for
compatibility reasons and partly for financial reasons (grants are
tied to this standard).
 
We did our original development in ORACLE on an MS-DOS platform, but
we are in the process of converting it to Microsoft ACCESS in Windows.
I'd be interested in hearing from anyone working in either of these
software environments.
 
As for vocabulary standards we are going to adopt the Art and
Architecture Thesaurus (the on-line version 2.0 is fantastic).
 
Richard Gerrard
Registrar, Toronto Historical Board