1. Virtual Exhibit Drawing Results!
2. Regional Training Sessions
3. E-mailing Reports with PastPerfect
4. Current Update Available 3.5B1
5. Tip of the Month
6. Look Who’s Using PastPerfect…
7. Conference Schedule for 2004
8. Contact us!
1. Virtual Exhibit Drawing results!
Congratulations to the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, winners of Virtual Exhibit! In a recent poll of random newsletter recipients, we asked a few basic questions about how satisfied you are with PastPerfect’s products and services, as well as some general information about the types of computers you are using, and how the data entry process is going. If you did not have an opportunity to participate in this poll, watch your inbox for future opportunities and your chances to win!
2. Upcoming Regional Training Sessions
Vacaville, CA: The Vacaville Museum
April 20, 21, 22 & 23 (special VE training the 23rd)
Tempe, AZ: Arizona Historical Society at Papago Park
April 27, 28 & 29
Wethersfield, CT: Wethersfield Historical Society
May 19, 20 & 21
Aurora, CO: Aurora History Museum
June 9, 10 & 11
Sugarland, TX: Museum of Southern History
June 15, 16, & 17
Waterloo, IA: Grout Museum District
August 18, 19, & 20
Contact training@museumsoftware.com for more information!
3. New! How to get your PastPerfect Reports in Email-able format
Many PastPerfect users have asked for the capability to e-mail their reports, and a good way to do this is to make them available in PDF format. PastPerfect is now able to print or send reports in the form of PDF files, with the help of a program called PDF Producer by Data Becker. PDF Producer is easy to use and basically installs itself as another printer on your computer. When you click on the print button of any document (not just from PastPerfect), you are able to select PDF Producer instead of a standard printer, thus getting your documents in a format that is workable for e-mail, posting on a website or printing from a computer that doesn’t have PastPerfect . You are also able to watermark and set security settings for your documents. This product is available from Data Becker directly or from Pastime Software Company for $49.95. Printing your reports to PDF will also work with Adobe Acrobat Standard 5.0 or 6.0. Call our sales office at sales@museumsoftware.com or (800) 562-6080 to order your copy of PDF Producer today!
4. PastPerfect Version 3.5 - Current Update Available 3.5B1…
The latest update now available from www.museumsoftware.com is 3.5B1. New Features available in update 3.5B1 include…
* Add new fields for location and activity to volunteer hours file
* Ask before location change is added to location history file
* Detail information for search terms
* On catalog detail reports, print accession date instead of received date,
unless accession date is blank
* Volunteer hours report by volunteer is now sorted by lastname
* Custom fields 11 and 12 now accept larger numbers
Don’t forget, if you have suggestions for PastPerfect improvements, please e-mail them to suggestions@museumsoftware.com. We are always open to suggestions and eager to hear of ways that PastPerfect can better serve our users.
5. Tip of the Month- Remember to Backup Your Data!!
Making frequent backups of your PastPerfect data and images is an essential component of a good collections management policy. In the unfortunate event of a disaster, having backups of your PastPerfect data and images to restore will save you the time and energy of re-entering information. Because backups are so important, PastPerfect makes them easy to do. Just follow these steps: to make a backup of your data to your hard drive, go to the Utilities tab and click the Backup button. Then click the Backup data to Hard Drive button, select Backup All Data Files, and click Start. It only takes a few moments for the backup to complete, and since it is a compressed file, it takes up very little space on your hard drive. We suggest making backups to your hard drive every day that you add or edit records in the program. If you have images in PastPerfect, you will also need to back those up by clicking the Backup button and clicking the Backup Image files button. We also suggest making backups to removable media, such as floppies, zip disks, or CDs. Should disaster strike in the form of a hard drive crash or something worse, you can restore your data back into the program and avoid having to re-enter all your records.
6. Look Who’s Using PastPerfect…*Fitchburg Historical Society*
Special thanks to Betsy Hannula from Fitchburg Historical Society for writing this month’s installment of Look Who’s Using PastPerfect. “Fitchburg is a small New England city in Massachusetts, having made its mark in the world with paper and textile manufacturing and machine making during the 1800s and 1900s and an immigrant population haling from more than 50 different countries providing the workforce for the huge output from the city. Fitchburg's natives are scattered all over the world, and making our collection accessible to them was very important.
Our mission is to collect, preserve, interpret and make accessible the history of Fitchburg. Most of our 2000 items have been cataloged on paper, but getting the information organized and then available online were the next steps. We have been using PastPerfect to catalog our collections since July 2000. The forms in the software require our volunteers to search out the information that on their own they might not look for. The forms are fairly easy to complete, a fill-in-the-blank format. It is still a time consuming task; it takes 20 minutes to put all the data about an object into the system. With more than 200,000 items, it'll take us years to get all our items into the system! But the results are worth every minute.
We utilize one of the virtual exhibit sites to put our entire collection (all of the items entered so far, which is more than 6,000) available on the internet. (It took us a few months to get the search time to where it's acceptable - we use another service to accommodate this function.) The results are spectacular - just what we should expect in this digital age. We had entered information about a catalog from a small Academy in Leicester, Massachusetts - a little slim volume listing teachers, students and curriculum for 1848-1872, and a week later we received a call from someone in Seattle Washington who wanted to know if a certain ancestor was listed. How remarkable!! We spanned the vastness of our country with the technology of the internet.
Making our collections available to everyone is a good selling point to our members and those who provide funding. Physical access to our building is no longer a requirement. We believe we're making significant progress to meeting the expectations of customers - researchers, students, teachers, and those who love their hometown. Much of this has been possible because of the capabilities of the PastPerfect program.” Learn more about Fitchburg Historical Society’s collections at http://www.museumresearcher.com/.
Would you like to know who else is using PastPerfect? Check out our updated User List at www.museumsoftware.com/client_list.htm!
7. Conference Schedule for 2004
Please visit Pastime Software staff at the following conferences in 2004…
American Association of Museums: New Orleans, LA. May 6 – 9
Florida Trust for Historic Preservation: Delray Beach, FL. May 12 – 14
Association of Indiana Museums: June 21 – 25
American Association for State and Local History: St. Louis, MO. Sept. 29 – Oct. 2
Association of Railway Museums Annual Conference: Ogden, UT. Oct. 13 – 17
Mid Atlantic Association of Museums: Philadelphia, PA. Oct 16 – 18
Address: 300 N. Pottstown Pike Suite 200
Exton, PA 19341
Website: www.MuseumSoftware.com
Sales & Product Info: 800/562-6080 sales@museumsoftware.com
Support: 800/562-6080 support@museumsoftware.com
Training: 610/304-0973 training@museumsoftware.com
Data Conversions: 253/589-0463 conversions@museumsoftware.com