Hi Lesley,
My small history museum uses PastPerfect for collections management, and I would recommend it.
Pros: established software developers with great support services; good price; you don't have to buy features you don't need, and when you do decide to buy them the price is still competitive with similar services; the option to have a locally-saved or cloud-based storage system, depending on your security requirements and IT needs; relatively easy to find staff who have experience with PastPerfect compared to other systems; doesn't require users or administrators to have skills in SQL or other coding knowledge to use right out of the box; if you decide to change systems later, most companies are familiar with exporting data out of PastPerfect; has a free demo of the software you can play around with with your own collections to see if it's a good match for your needs.
Cons: PP5 (the non-cloud-based option) is a bit old-fashioned and clunky, both visually and operationally; the written manual is huge and not very helpful for folks new to the software; it's really built for art and history collections - you can make it work for archives and science collections, but it will take more work at the beginning to get it set up for that; limited character/language support means it is hard if not impossible to include non-Latin-alphabet words and names in cataloging information; the donor management side of it is a lot of work for small museums, but might not be robust enough for larger ones.
Neutrals: Like any CMS, will require planning on how you want to use it - I recommend making an internal cataloging manual before you start any significant cataloging projects; video trainings are available for PP5, but not really for PPW.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about our experience with PastPerfect!
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Hilary Pittenger
White River Valley Museum
Auburn, WA
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-07-2021 04:25 PM
From: Lesley Marchessault
Subject: Past Perfect
Does anyone use PastPerfect Museum software for collection and donor management? We're looking for a software that can manage the collection, archives, library, and donor records. Any insight into PastPerfect or other softwares is appreciated, thank you!
Lesley
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Lesley Marchessault
Development Officer
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Provincetown MA
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