I couldn't agree more with Robert Baron about the importance and
effectiveness of user groups, both for mutual help and for acting as
pressure groups to get improvements from a vendor. But these are
phenomena that also exist (bigtime) in the world of standard
database products, most of which have electronic bulletin boards,
websites, elaborate training programs held in various locations
across the country, and at least an annual convention where users
with all kinds of applications problems come together. It is true
that the museum community has some specific computing requirements
and problems; but it is also true that most of these problems are
generic to some degree, and there is much to be learned from
exposure to the methods used by (for example) warehouse managers,
who may already (mirabile dictu!) have even solved problems a museum
curator thought were peculiar to her application.

Pat Galloway
MS Dept. of Archives and History