Open Forum

Our museum started in 1985 as a USAF base level museum, under the oversight and management of the National Museum of the USAF, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.  Every item donate to a local base museum became an accession of the NMUSAF.  When McClellan AFB was scheduled for closure in 2001, NMUSAF made a number of inspection trips starting in 1998.  A private non-profit took over running the museum at base closure.  After a number of items were returned/shipped to NMUSAF, they decided that all accessions after a specific point, accession #2000-056, would be property of the non-profit.

Years earlier, the Collections Manager (1986 to 2013) had used Alpha 4, a database program, to develop an accession program.  This was used from approximately 1991 to 2013, with prior accessions included.   In 2013, with the help of a fellowship from Intel, minimal information on the NMUSAF items, approximately 3,000, was transferred from Alpha 4 to Past Perfect 4.  In 2013 we started full use of PP4 for NMUSAF items and our own accessions.  We have since upgraded to PP.