Dear Alissa,

Hi there.  My name is Bianca Lapins and I am the Members Coordinator of the Museum Victoria membership program.  Some help with your membership cards!

Our program covers membership to our three campuses - Scienceworks, Immigration Museum and the new internationally acclaimed Melbourne Museum.

We currently have 4500 member units which translates to around 14,000 people.  Our memberships are valid for one or two years from time of joining which means we are issuing a lot of membership cards each month.

We have recently changed our membership cards from a cardboard business sized card with color logo etc on one side and space for handwritten information (names, expiry date, category, member id no:) on the other side.

We have purchased a new card printer that is linked to a freestanding PC and prints a barcode, name, category, expiry date and membership id no: onto the reverse side of a pre-printed color credit card style card.

These cards are them able to be scanned at our admission desk to track member attendance and gather statistics.  This system is linked in with our overall admission system and did cost us in excess of $AUS10,000 - stretching our meager budget!

In the process of trying to find an alternative card system I did find something that I thing would be suitable for you.  Several stationary companies will  provide an A4 sheet with business card sized thin plastic cards attached (glue that will easily peal off- or a peal off card) in the bottom right hand corner.  These A4 sheets can even be pre-printed with letterhead design.

The concept being that you design a standard letter with selected merge fields (for address and membership card) and then feed the A4 sheets through a laser or matrix dot printer. This allows you to produce a "Welcome" or other style letter with the membership card attached.  It also allows you to do 200 all at once or only 1 without wastage.

I have several examples of these sheets which I would be more than happy to send to you if you provide me your mailing address.

Hope this is of some use.  Wishing you a Happy New Year.

Cheers,

Bianca Lapins
Members Coordinator
Museum Victoria

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From:   Lake Superior Railroad Museum[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Reply To:       Museum discussion list
Sent:   Thursday, 4 January 2001 2:42 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]

Good morning! I have a question about museum membership. We do not have a
membership secretary, so membership duties are handled by our office
manager. Because of this, our memberships go from January 1-December 31,
with some exceptions case by case. Currently, she has to put business-card
sized membership cards into her typewriter and individually fill each one
out with the member's name, expiration date, and membership category. The
membership cards are basically business cards with our logo and a few lines
to write or type information on. As you can imagine, this is time consuming,
frustrating, and impractical in many ways. We would very much like a
different method of doing this. We looked into getting sheets of business
cards that would be filled out on the computer, but if we get a new member
in, say, June, filling out one card on the computer would mean wasting the
other 9 cards on the sheet. Once one card is torn off, the sheet cannot be
fed through the printer. I hope that I have explained this in an
understandable fashion. If anybody has a membership system that they are
happy with, I would greatly appreciate your input. Thank you!




Alissa Acker
Curator of Education
Lake Superior Railroad Museum

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