Here’s my two cents about PastPerfect, which
is our current system. I would be interested in finding out about CollectiveAccess
from people who have used it—the fact that it is free and open source is
potentially very appealing and I have been thinking about whether we should consider
it ourselves.
I personally have used PastPerfect both
at the Rosenbach and at the
In general, Pastperfect is working well
for us at the Rosenbach. It is easy to use for cataloging (I have trained
innumerable interns to use it), it supports images (if you buy the image
upgrade), and it has a wide variety of search functions including keyword
searching, searching by specific fields and the ability to create reports which
can include a large number of parameters. I also have to say that their support
staff is great-whenever I call with a question or problem they have been
extremely helpful in sorting it out. Also, you can download trial versions of
PastTime products to play with and see if you like them-which I have found very
handy.
If you want to put your records on the
web (as we have done), their PastPerfect Online program is very easy to work
with and is very quick for running searches (faster than our in house version).
However unlike a web based system (like Collective Access) the web version is
not dynamic—when you make changes to your database in house they are not
automatically reflected online, you need to periodically sync.
Of course, having worked extensively with
the system I can give you a long list of things I find annoying about it, but I
suspect every program has its bugs. Here are some of my pet peeves (in no
particular order):
□
PP is
only available for PCs. It may be possible to run on a Mac with a windows
emulator, but my one attempt to do this failed.
□
PP has
a spell check feature (which I love), but you can only spell check each record
individually, not the whole database.
□
It is
harder than it should be to do global commands such as search and
replace-except for some very basic replacements you have to type in the command
by hand, which is not in and of itself problematic, but in order to get the
correct command for anything remotely complicated you need to call PP and have
them tell you. Furthermore, the command window is too small to handle any
lengthy corrections (i.e. replacing a whole sentence that appears in numerous
records).
□
You
cannot import records from Microsoft Access. When I was trying to convert an
old database I had to export it to Excel and then import into Pastperfect. This
meant that any fields longer than 256 characters were cut off. That being said,
importing from Excel did work well and you can also import from Dbase and
FoxPro
□
For
some reason, getting images to appear in your reports involves a number of
annoying steps (which I actually have to keep written down so I can refer to
them), whereas I think it should be simpler.
□
The
exhibit history/loan history of each object is displayed by Pastperfect's assigned
"exhibit number" or "loan number" which reflects the
date/order you inputted the information on the exhibit/loan, not the actual
dates of the exhibit or loan. There is no way to change these numbers.
□
You
can't restrict permission to view specific fields, you can only restrict
complete "tabs". That meant that in order to prevent
researchers/docents/etc from seeing appraisals we also had to restrict their
access to condition information. Similarly, we can't prevent people from
looking at legal issues involving an object (which may be sensitive) without
restricting their access to the related objects list and publication history.
□
Although
the system has very good searching capabilities, the number of different
searches can actually be a bit confusing to those not familiar with the system.
What is a lexicon search as opposed to an object search or a keyword search?
Each of these has a separate "button" and it may not be clear to
casual users which is best for their needs. Of course if you're familiar with
the system it’s not difficult, although I think they should just have all the
different searches accessible in one place, from a single interface.
□
If you
do a search (rather than creating a custom report) and want to print a list of
results of your search you cannot choose the fields to be displayed in the
print-out-you're stuck with their template. This is annoying because it’s much
simpler to do a search than a report.
□
The
system isn’t at all customizable. What you get is what you get.
Hopefully this is helpful.
Katherine Haas
Curatorial Assistant
215-732-1600 x129
215-545-7529 (fax)
From: Museum
discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Barbara Wahlberg
Sent: Wednesday, September 23,
2009 4:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L]
I am working at a small museum that is focused on local history,
biographical history and politics related. We are in the process of
purchasing collections management software.
I am looking for any advice and your personal views and experiences of the
products 'PastPerfect' and 'CollectiveAccess'.
Thank you
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