Open Forum

Hi Elizabeth, I'll second Kalsie's experience, we went from Embark to CatalogIt. The team over there are so helpful and responsive and are always improving the system. That said, this is more anecdotal, I'm on the periphery and have heard nothing but accolades from the registrars. Give me a call, they are generous with their time.

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Matthew Isble
Exhibit Designer & Founder of MuseumTrade.org
misble@crockerartmuseum.org
Crocker Art Museum
Sacramento CA
misble@crockerartmuseum.org
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Same here.  Our Collections Director is thrilled with the change from Past Perfect to CatalogIT. The transition was pretty seamless, and the support was great. 

Hi Elizabeth - we recently went from PastPerfect to Collector Systems. I can't recommend Collector Systems enough. Our migration happened after a data breach that wiped a lot of the connective tissue between records (and image files) so if your migration also involves pulling information/files that are stored outside your database, feel free to reach out since that was the biggest hurdle we faced.

OOPs, sorry, we went from Embark to Catalogit.  Not Past Perfect.

Hi Liz, I did a few data migrations from weird in house systems and filemaker to Emu/Axiell. Companies will generally want you to use their existing structures/layouts unless you have a huge budget for customization (which we did, I was working in Qatar at the time and they paid for a tech from the company to live and work on site with us - luxury!!). My first project was in England and we had low budget. The most important thing - and I recommend doing this yourself if you are the main user/admin of your existing system - or checking this thoroughly - is the data mapping stage. This is when you look at every field in your existing database and match it to the field it should go to in the new system. Some fields might have more or less functionality (ie link to a thesaurus or a drop down list etc). Also if you do data clean up before or in the middle of this process the end result in the new system will be much better. If you can have the users of the system work on this stage it is also ideal because then they will have an idea of where their data went. If you can stop all editing on your current system (leave it read only for users), export ALL the data into a spreadsheet and validate all of the data (ie make sure it should be there, fix any inconsistencies) BEFORE it gets migrated into the new system that is ideal too. OR if you notice some consistent mistakes you can give the migrating company rules to fix like 'make all dates like this YYYY MMM DD' for example. There will be a data entry black out period from the time you either start doing the data cleansing/validation to the time you get it back from the company in the new system so pick the timeframe wisely for this and be sure that you have that written into the contract so that it is clear of the expectations. You can give people spreadsheets formatted so they will migrate/import easily into the new system if it is mission critical to your operations. Also there should be a legacy field that is not editable by anyone, ever, in the new system that has the exact copy of all of the data from the old record somewhere in the new one. This field should be searchable so that if someone absolutely cannot find the record using the new system it will still come up. I'd also be sure to flag the fields that will be public or shared with departments in the data mapping process. So you need to know what fields all of your existing users use the most, and how they use them (edit, read only, reporting). Also check the user permissions and the possiblity of creating your own user groups or if they are off the shelf - you likely want a way to keep registrar data private (ie not accesible for deparments like education or marketing). I'd be happy to have a zoom call if you want to talk through any of this! 

Adding a huge +1 to the data mapping advice from Dr. Laura here. Whatever system we help clients migrate to in any capacity, data mapping, data cleaning, and data governance is critical. 

Hi Liz.

I recently wrapped up managing a CMS migration program for the Royal BC Museum and Provincial Archives in Victoria, British Columbia.  They migrated from 2 older databsases - one home grown, and the other Minisis M2A - to SKINsoft's S-Museum and S-Archives.  Though it was a complex process, it was highly successful -  and business stakeholders are happy with the new system and vendor.

I actually gave a presentation on the topic of CMS Migrations at last year's AAM Conference in LA - I would be happy to talk with you - and for that matter anyone else considering moving to a new CMS - on learnings and best practices on this topic.  Feel free to reach out!