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PastPerfect
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May 2006 Newsletter 1.
Wish You Were Here! Drawing - Enter to Win Free Support for a Year!
Pastime Software Company is extending an exclusive opportunity for our newsletter recipients! We are holding a drawing for a free Annual Support contract for the PastPerfect program. Annual Support contracts give your museum unlimited calls to our support office for questions and assistance regarding the PastPerfect program and upgrades. Just send us a postcard from your museum and you will be entered to win! To enter, send a postcard
from your museum or town to: Please include your contact information on your postcard. Entries must be postmarked by May 31, 2006. We will contact the institution who wins next month and post the name of the winning institution in the July newsletter! For more information about Annual Support, please go to http://www.museumsoftware.com/support_options.htm. 2. Getting Your Collection on the Web is Easy Using PastPerfect-Online! Museums, Libraries, and Historical Societies around the nation are using PastPerfect-Online to share their collections with the world! Getting your institution's collection from PastPerfect to your PastPerfect-Online website is quick and easy! Once you have selected the records that you want to share online, the Web Publishing Wizard will guide you step by step through the process of customizing your records to publish on the web, including field display names, search categories, and watermark setup for your images. You also receive a website management page to select different layout and color schemes and insert your institution's logo to further customize your site. The PastPerfect-Online setup fee is $248, with annual hosting starting at $410 for 10,000 records. AASLH Institutional Members receive a discounted rate of $199 for PastPerfect-Online setup and annual hosting starting at $329 for 10,000 records. Here are just a few of the institutions that have already started sharing their collections online: Hoboken Historical Society You can view these institutions' PastPerfect-Online sites by going to www.pastperfect-online.com! 3. PastPerfect Training Classes are Coming to Your Area! The 2006 Training Classes are well under way! As more dates and locations are scheduled, they will be added to the listing below. To find out more information about the scheduled training classes or to inquire about possibly scheduling a session in your area, please contact our Training Coordinator, Amy Dunn, by phone at 610-304-0973 or by e-mail at training@museumsoftware.com.
Arvada, CO Indianapolis, IN Great Falls, MT Corsicana, TX Syracuse, NY East Lansing, MI Lexington, KY Richmond, VA Be sure to check out our website at www.museumsoftware.com/training.htm for additional training dates and other information! 4. Free Updates for PastPerfect Museum Software Did you know updates are available from our website for your PastPerfect Museum Software version 4.0? These free updates are released every two months or so and are available for download by going to this page on our website: www.museumsoftware.com/software_updates.htm . If you would rather receive a free update CD, please contact our Support Office toll free at 1-800-562-6080 or by e-mail at support@museumsoftware.com. PastPerfect Version 4- New Update Available 4.0C4 The new update now available for PastPerfect version 4 is 4.0C4. New features in this update include: * Ability to add fields:
firstname, lastname, greeting, address1, address2, city, state and zip
to the Dues by Membership Type Report If you have comments or suggestions for PastPerfect version 4, please e-mail your ideas to suggestions@museumsoftware.com. We are eager to hear your comments and learn ways that Pastime Software can better serve our customers. 5.
Look Who's Using PastPerfect: Hoboken Historical Museum! The Hoboken Historical Museum, located in Hoboken, New Jersey, is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year. The museum, which is dedicated to the history of the Mile Square City, opened its permanent home five years ago. David Webster, Collections Manager, says the museum currently presents two major exhibits, six cultural exhibits in a smaller gallery and between thirty and forty events each year. The museum's collections started with its founding, but it was only in 2001 that staff started using PastPerfect for cataloging. About a quarter of an estimated 35-40,000 items in their collection have been cataloged. This year the Hoboken Historical Museum decided to make their collection accessible to all by using PastPerfect-Online. The online collection provides current users such as home owners, real estate professionals, and novice researchers a great starting point for their research about the city and its residents, including Hoboken native Frank Sinatra. David believes that having a searchable online catalog saves the small museum valuable time by encouraging self-guided research of their collection. The museum's education staff plans to use PastPerfect-Online for their middle and high school programs, so that everyone from genealogists to students to casual researchers will enjoy searching the collection. You can visit the Hoboken Historical Museum and Cultural Center online at www.hobokenmuseum.org. You can also browse their collection online by going to http://hoboken.pastperfect-online.com. 6. Tech
Tip: Creating PDF Reports from PastPerfect. Many clients have asked for ways to share PastPerfect data and reports by email. In the past, organizations were forced to print out reports and fax them to researchers and coworkers. Now, there is an easier way to share information with PDF files and Adobe Acrobat Reader®. PDF (Portable Document Format) is a popular way to share information between computers. Some of the major advantages of PDF format boasted on the Adobe® website include: Open format - De facto standard for more secure, dependable electronic information exchange - recognized by industries and governments around the world. Multiplatform - Viewable and printable on any platform - Macintosh, Microsoft® Windows®, UNIX®, and many mobile platforms. Maintain information integrity - Adobe PDF files look exactly like original documents and preserve source file information - text, drawings, 3D, full-color graphics, photos, and even business logic - regardless of the application used to create them. Accessible - Adobe PDF documents work with assistive technology to help make information accessible to people with disabilities. PDF creation software is offered by a number of vendors. Recently, I have worked with three products that represent the spectrum of cost-benefit solutions. Here is a brief overview: Adobe Acrobat 6.0 ($99-$399) Data Becker PDF Producer
($19-$49) PDF reDIRECT V2 (Freeware) Here are the steps I took
to try PDF reDIRECT. If you have trouble creating PDFs in PastPerfect, call the support office and we'll get you up and running in no time! 7. Contact
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