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October/November 2008 Newsletter 1. Upcoming Training Opportunities for PastPerfect 4.0 2. Video Tech Tips for PastPerfect 4.0 4. PastPerfect Featured User: Kelley House Museum, Mendocino, CA 5. PastPerfect Featured Product: Annual Support 6. Tech Tip: How to Attach a Multi-Media File 1. Upcoming Training Opportunities for PastPerfect 4.0 The 2008 PastPerfect Training schedule is coming to a close. Currently scheduled training dates are listed below. Plans are underway for our 2009 Training schedule! Online Training – Cataloging your Collection with PastPerfect 4.0 November 10-12
PastPerfect Software is proud to introduce web-based training classes. The classes are taught real-time and are broadcast live to your computer. Using the internet and a telephone based conference call, we walk through the processes of using PastPerfect to catalog your collection. All training materials are provided online. All you need is a phone, the ability to call a long distance number and internet access that is at least DSL speed. For more information, check out our training site at www.museumsoftware.com/training.shtml or contact our Training Coordinator, Jennessa Reed, by email at training@museumsoftware.com or by phone at 1-800-562-6080. 2. Video Tech Tips for PastPerfect 4.0 PastPerfect Software, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of new Video Technical Tips! To better assist you, we continue to develop support services that are available from our website. In addition to the development of Frequently Asked Questions, we have started to develop Video Tech Tips as an audio-visual resource. This newest support service enables you to watch and listen, as the Video Tech Tip displays a demonstration of PastPerfect procedures on your computer screen. Video Tech Tips may be viewed at your convenience! Once your selection loads, the video will begin playing automatically. You may use the controls below the video screen to pause, play, replay, and move backward and forward within the video. Additionally, if you would like to follow along using the text of the tip, a copy of the script is provided on the Video Tech Tip web page by selecting “Printable Text Version”. Current Video Tech Tips include:
To view these Video Tech Tips, please visit our website at: www.museumsoftware.com/techtips.shtml. More Video Tech Tips are coming soon! In these days of economic belt tightening, more organizations are turning to outside funding sources to jump-start collections management projects. Funding sources range from federal and state programs to foundations and community businesses to museum members. A number of federal agencies including the Institute of Museum and Library Services and National Archives and Records Administration offer collections stewardship grants. For a complete list of federal grants, please visit: http://www.grants.gov/. State agencies across the country provide grants for collections projects. The featured programs below have funded purchasing PastPerfect in the last couple of years. Featured Grant Opportunities: Minnesota Historical Society MHS accepts applications for Artifact Collections projects through its State Grants-in-Aid program. To qualify, organizations must interpret and preserve Minnesota history. The funds must also be matched, but matches may be “in-kind, or donated services and materials contributed for the project.” Please check the website for Winter grant cycle deadlines. Utah Office of Museum Services Project Support Grants are available to all Utah museums. Funding is up to $6000, and must be matched. The amount of required matching funds is dependent on the museum’s budget. Museum budgets of $100,000 or less have a 25% match. The next grant cycle deadline will be in the Spring of 2009. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission PHMC offers competitive grants to “support a wide variety of museum, history, archives and historic preservation projects” in Pennsylvania. Collections Management Project Grants of up to $5000 do not require a match and are designed for small museums with budgets of $100,000 or less. The next application deadline is December 1st. If you decide to apply for a grant for your organization’s project, there is ready assistance. Granting agencies’ websites provide eligibility requirements, detailed instructions, and helpful staff’s contact information. Grantors’ applications describe the characteristics reviewers want and how they rank requests. It is important to pay attention to the language used. It is often the language they want to see on the application. Grantors like IMLS and the PHMC also provide examples of successful applications from recent years. Foundations and area businesses also have grant or donation programs for local cultural institutions. As part of the community, they have a stake in its cultural life, and may find money even in difficult economic times. The Foundation Center’s online directory is a great place to start researching foundation funders. You can search by foundation name, state or even zip code. If you decide not to pursue a grant, you might consider asking for funding in your member newsletter. One PastPerfect client found several donors this way to provide money for purchasing PastPerfect and a new computer. We wish you the best in your funding search, and hope to bring you more ideas in the near future. 4. PastPerfect Featured User: Kelley House Museum, Mendocino, CA Special thanks to Carolyn Zeitler, Archivist, for contributing this month’s article! The history of Mendocino, California, as a town began in 1850, when Jerome Ford came overland to find the remains of the Frolic, a clipper ship carrying goods from China to San Francisco. Unable to salvage any of the silks and china aboard the Frolic, it was discovered that the unknown northern coast of California had something much more valuable to satisfy the hunger of Gold Rush California – dense forests of redwoods. By 1860, there was a mill on every river with people coming from as far away as Finland, Portugal and China to take advantage of the opportunities provided by these gentle giants. The Kelley House Museum began in 1973 as Mendocino Historical Research Incorporated (MHRI) through the efforts of two women, Dorothy Bear and Beth Stebbins. They had arrived from Southern California in 1969 and began researching the history of the Mendocino coast, recording it with photographs and documents of the people, the events and the architecture of the early town. In 1974, the Kelley House, home of Mendocino pioneer, William Kelly, was acquired and restored to become the home of MHRI. From such beginnings, the organization grew to be a part of the community and a resource for researchers of coastal history. In time, Mendocino Historical Research Inc. evolved into the Kelley House Museum and is now both a historic house museum and a research institution. In 2004, Kelley House purchased PastPerfect, and with a generous gift left to the organization, the Board hired a librarian to begin cataloging the collection. Teaming up with PastPerfect, the Kelley House is now able to provide access to approximately 3000 entries of maps, documents, books, photographs, oral histories and artifacts that make up our collection. This is the first phase of a long-term project enabling visitors to search and explore the collection on-line. At this time, only a quarter of our collection is currently cataloged in PastPerfect. 1400 images of people, towns, schools, ships, and logging, as well as photographs of the many artifacts the Kelley House has collected over time, can now be viewed on-line with PastPerfect-Online. One can research family history, find out more about the historic houses in the town of Mendocino and learn the many fascinating stories of the people who created our unique Mendocino history. With PastPerfect, the connections between people, places and events finally come alive.
To learn more about Mendocino and the Kelley House, please visit our website at: mendocinohistory.org. 5. PastPerfect Featured Product: Annual Support PastPerfect Software has no required maintenance fees! Through our recommended Annual Support Contracts, we can help you utilize and safeguard one of your organization’s biggest investments: your data. When you call our toll free number or send an email, you will receive a prompt, friendly and professional response. Our staff is dedicated to the museum community. Technical and museum specialists can help with a wide range of questions from “How do I set up PastPerfect on my network?” to “How do I classify this artifact in Chenhall’s Nomenclature?” to “How do I create a report with these fields and these results?” Your data is not just valuable in and of itself. It represents the time staff have spent researching and entering it into PastPerfect. With an annual support contract, you have the comfort of knowing that assistance is just a phone call away when unexpected problems occur. If necessary our support team can help recover your organization’s data by walking you through reinstalling the program and restoring data from your PastPerfect data backup. With or without support, PastPerfect users receive prompt and comprehensive assistance from our support technicians. PastPerfect Software wants all clients to get the most out of the program. So, we provide a number of free services from our website, including downloadable updates, answers to Frequently Asked Questions and Video Tech Tips. If your questions go deeper, or you feel your staff may call several times a year, an Annual Support Contract will save you time and money. Plus, an Annual Support Contract gives you the confidence to contact us an unlimited number of times for one low fee. Users without contracts pay a $85 per incident fee. If you purchase a support contract when you order the PastPerfect 4.0 Basic Program you save 20%! We offer this discount to ensure that everything gets off on the right foot. Annual Support renewals start at just $332 for single license users with an AASLH Institutional Membership, while AASLH institutional members with a Network Upgrade pay $412.00 for the year. To learn more about support options, please visit our website, or contact Jennifer Whitfield at 1-800-562-6080 x103 if you have any questions. 6. Tech Tip: How to Attach a Multi-Media File The Multi-Media Upgrade is an optional feature for PastPerfect 4.0 that allows you to attach digital images, audio files, video files, Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel files, PDF files, web pages and more to each catalog record. Please note: in order to attach some of these files, you will need to have the related software installed on your computer. The attachment of multi-media files to your records may assist with the ability to perform research and diminish the need for handling, which will help preserve your items. Adding the first multi-media file:
Adding additional multi-media files:
If you have any questions regarding how to attach multi-media links to your PastPerfect records, please contact our support office at 1-800-562-6080, toll free or email us at support@museumsoftware.com.
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