The following was posted to Registrars Listserve

>Hi,
>
>    I work in a museum that's beginning to introduce a software to
>handle it's collection this year. The guys in charge of this activity
>think that the old records of collection, which are on paper, should be
>thrown away, and from now on we should rely on the database of the new
>system.
>    I'm afraid that this could cause some inconveniences in the future.
>Did somebody else in this list experience this kind of situation ?
>
>    Is there some texts talking about the use of software systems to
>handle a museum's collection in the net, or in some magazine or book ?
>
>    Thanks for any information ....
>
>    Bye,
>    Armando
>
>
This registrar's opinion, which has been to date well supported by the institution:
Manual records will remain vital - they work without electrical power and can be archival in ways that the electronic world has not yet quite mastered. When one's computer goes down - for whatever reason - the paper files will enable you and your staff to continue to maintain and manage your collection and information about it and will allow at least portions of your audiences access to the information. 
Others will have longer, more thorough, perhaps more convincing, rationales for keeping manual files.  But for our museum I foresee using an automated collection management system, consisting of both database and imagebase, as a supplementary, complementary, and occasionally redundant method of storage and access to text and image information about our collections.


Patricia J. Whitesides
Registrar
The Toledo Museum of Art
P.O. Box 1013
Toledo, OH  43697
Telephone:  419-255-8000, ext. 324
FAX:  419-255-5638
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