At 10:43 AM 8/28/97 -0400, Ross Weeks wrote:
>To add to the list of suggestions to Vee Housman, several institutions
>including ours have found askSam for Windows  to be useful and
>accommodating.
>
>It is a free-form information management system, into which we are entering
>all data on 75,000 items.  We're also scanning in photos of most of them.
>
>One designs a template to meet the needs of the organization.   It takes a
>bit of set-up and requires a great deal of internal memory, so we have in
>effect dedicated one CPU to it along with a backup tape drive for
>off-premises retention of the data.   Tape is the most useful for backup,
>according to our computer consultant, given the regular updating and the
>need to have everything in one place so that we can recall quickly by
>accession date, type of item, or other variable.
>
>Our version is 3.0 but it has probably been upgraded.
>
>askSam's e-mail address is <[log in to unmask]> and it is at PO 1428, Perry,
>Fl. 32347.  Phone 1-800-800-1997.
>

I use AskSam for windows to organize my collected e-mail and can tell you
that compared to even the most simple of object management systems, its
reporting and sorting is very weak.  It is fine (well, almost fine) for ad
hoc searches, and can't be beat for unformatted and unstructured data, but
if you must report and sort by fields, produce calculated results and
structured output, go elsewhere.  If your database needs a lot of text and
has small proportions try using something like Q&A or FMP, if it is more
complex and requires multi-valued fields and variable length fields try a
PICK-like system.


===========================
Robert A. Baron
Museum Computer Consultant
mailto:[log in to unmask]