I have been watching this thread with some interest. We have been developing a collections management system based on a relational data model for the last four years. The standard it is based around is the one created for the National Humanities database by the Canadian Heritage Infromation Network. This was adopted partly for compatibility reasons and partly for financial reasons (grants are tied to this standard). We did our original development in ORACLE on an MS-DOS platform, but we are in the process of converting it to Microsoft ACCESS in Windows. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone working in either of these software environments. As for vocabulary standards we are going to adopt the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (the on-line version 2.0 is fantastic). Richard Gerrard Registrar, Toronto Historical Board