Here’s my two cents about PastPerfect, which is our current system.  I would be interested in finding out about CollectiveAccess from people who have used it—the fact that it is free and open source is potentially very appealing and I have been thinking about whether we should consider it ourselves.

 

I personally have used PastPerfect both at the Rosenbach and at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware (which has since switched to a KE Emu system).

 

In general, Pastperfect is working well for us at the Rosenbach. It is easy to use for cataloging (I have trained innumerable interns to use it), it supports images (if you buy the image upgrade), and it has a wide variety of search functions including keyword searching, searching by specific fields and the ability to create reports which can include a large number of parameters. I also have to say that their support staff is great-whenever I call with a question or problem they have been extremely helpful in sorting it out. Also, you can download trial versions of PastTime products to play with and see if you like them-which I have found very handy. 

 

If you want to put your records on the web (as we have done), their PastPerfect Online program is very easy to work with and is very quick for running searches (faster than our in house version). However unlike a web based system (like Collective Access) the web version is not dynamic—when you make changes to your database in house they are not automatically reflected online, you need to periodically sync.

 

Of course, having worked extensively with the system I can give you a long list of things I find annoying about it, but I suspect every program has its bugs. Here are some of my pet peeves (in no particular order):

 

□        PP is only available for PCs. It may be possible to run on a Mac with a windows emulator, but my one attempt to do this failed.

 

□        PP has a spell check feature (which I love), but you can only spell check each record individually, not the whole database.

 

□        It is harder than it should be to do global commands such as search and replace-except for some very basic replacements you have to type in the command by hand, which is not in and of itself problematic, but in order to get the correct command for anything remotely complicated you need to call PP and have them tell you. Furthermore, the command window is too small to handle any lengthy corrections (i.e. replacing a whole sentence that appears in numerous records).

 

□        You cannot import records from Microsoft Access. When I was trying to convert an old database I had to export it to Excel and then import into Pastperfect. This meant that any fields longer than 256 characters were cut off. That being said, importing from Excel did work well and you can also import from Dbase and FoxPro

 

□        For some reason, getting images to appear in your reports involves a number of annoying steps (which I actually have to keep written down so I can refer to them), whereas I think it should be simpler.

 

□        The exhibit history/loan history of each object is displayed by Pastperfect's assigned "exhibit number" or "loan number" which reflects the date/order you inputted the information on the exhibit/loan, not the actual dates of the exhibit or loan. There is no way to change these numbers.

 

□        You can't restrict permission to view specific fields, you can only restrict complete "tabs". That meant that in order to prevent researchers/docents/etc from seeing appraisals we also had to restrict their access to condition information. Similarly, we can't prevent people from looking at legal issues involving an object (which may be sensitive) without restricting their access to the related objects list and publication history.

 

□        Although the system has very good searching capabilities, the number of different searches can actually be a bit confusing to those not familiar with the system. What is a lexicon search as opposed to an object search or a keyword search? Each of these has a separate "button" and it may not be clear to casual users which is best for their needs. Of course if you're familiar with the system it’s not difficult, although I think they should just have all the different searches accessible in one place, from a single interface.

 

□        If you do a search (rather than creating a custom report) and want to print a list of results of your search you cannot choose the fields to be displayed in the print-out-you're stuck with their template. This is annoying because it’s much simpler to do a search than a report.

 

□        The system isn’t at all customizable. What you get is what you get.

 

Hopefully this is helpful. 

 

Katherine Haas

Curatorial Assistant

Rosenbach Museum & Library

2008 Delancey Pl.

Philadelphia, PA 19103

215-732-1600 x129

215-545-7529 (fax)

 

 

 

  _____  

From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Barbara Wahlberg
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 4:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L]

 

I am working at a small museum that is focused on local history, biographical history and politics related.  We are in the process of purchasing collections management software.

I am looking for any advice and your personal views and experiences of the products 'PastPerfect' and 'CollectiveAccess'.   

Thank you 
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