Hi, I've worked at two places with Pastperfect, I mostly search with the people and search terms field but often use keyword search as well. As for training, I think it is one of the easier programs to learn. You may want to look into finding high school/university age volunteers ( I know here in Ontario High school kids need so many hours of volunteer work to graduate and it looks good on their college apps. Maybe you could get museum studies students as interns who are looking for some experience to work on it for a few months. Hope this helps some. Susan Gonzalez Archivist Holstein Canada Brantford, Ontario -----Original Message----- From: Shannon Lindridge [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 12:00 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [MUSEUM-L] PastPerfect For those of you who are using PastPerfect out there, which of the research methods do you/your volunteers use the most? My dilemma, we converted from FileMakerPro to PastPerfect going on two years ago and the program is pretty much unusable do to the fact much of the information did not end up in the correct field, somewhat scattered. My plans were to have information entered into the people field and search terms field, by volunteers, and have our reference room volunteers, most are of retirement age, use the people field and search terms field for performing research request for our patrons in our research library. I thought this would be the easiest method for our volunteers to access the information. I have been hesitant to teach our reference room volunteers the program for fear of them getting frustrated at not being able to find the information they are looking for. I have thought of training them to do dataentry, but they are usually to busy to perform dataentry while working in the reference room. My other dilemma/difficulty has been finding volunteers who are willing to do dataentry. I would appreciate any guidance, suggestions anyone can give on training the "older generation" volunteer a new computer program, how to recruit volunteers to do dataentry, and as stated before what research method(s) most commonly used in PastPerfect. I have also cross-posted this message at Pastime Software. --Shannon ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes). ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).