In article <[log in to unmask]>, Sofka Vinos
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>Thanks for the advice from Mary Parr, Hodcarry, Jennifer Nuske, Adrienne
>DeArmas, et al.
>
>In December last year we were in Riga and attended the meeting of the
>Latvian Museums Association.  One major discussion was on computerizing
>their museum records - most museums have only written records. They
>wanted to have the same system for the whole country. The question was:
>do we make our own, or do we get a commercial one?
>
>If they make their own, they start from scratch in a country where there
>are good computer people, but none of them know about museums or have
>experience in collections management. They would need months to develop
>the programme. It is unrealistic to think they import a contractor (who
>pays?) who would go back across a sea (the nearest being to Finland or
>Sweden) once finished, with no easy way to ask questions afterwards.
>Phone costs are so expensive people need permission to use them, and
>have cut off their fax lines; e-mail is not yet wide-spread in their
>museum world.
>
There is money from the EU for trans-national projects (and trans-
national can include countries outside the EU, including the US).

It's not easy to come by: you need professional project managers.  But
don't worry, that just gets added in to the project costs (I worked on a
EU funded project which cost the EU many times what actual delivery of
the project cost, because of all the EU costs involved: the result was
the museum involved got what it wanted, the project management company
got paid, and the EU paid over the odds for what it wanted the museum to
do.  The risks were all bourne by the project management company: the
museum put little but time up before getting the project accepted.

If anyone _is_ interested in co-opreating with museums in Europe to our
mutual advantage, I'll happily put them in touch with the project
management company I worked with.
--
Pat Reynolds
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Keeper of Social History, Buckinghamshire County Museum
   "It might look a bit messy now, but just you come back in 500 years time"
   (T. Prattchet)