General guidance question:

One institution with which I work has an opportunity before them to pursue acquiring a computer management program for its operation. Now, the options range from using a general business package (e.g. Microsoft Money) to a more customized and expensive program (say, FileMaker for the archives) to the outright museum management software packages offered by the likes of PastPerfect.

In advising them, I'm left with realizing two things: 1) a system like PastPerfect or FileMaker can make things much easier and "idiot-proof" in that you're not faced with the prospect of someone accidentally deleting an entire column or year's worth of work because of unfamiliarity with, say, MS Access or Excel. But: 2) the proprietary nature of, for example, the archive cataloging system makes it rather difficult for, as an example, a volunteer to take a boxload of slides home, catalog it there, then return with the data to upload--which is part of what they're doing now, and as it turns out the house standard is MS Excel just because it happens to be on all the computers in question.

Of course, this institution has the option of doing nothing and just continuing the way it always does. One of the arguments against new software would be the need to enter a huge backlog of information such as archived financial statements, preserved items, inventory of artifacts, etc., and there's a vague sense of "if it ain't broke don't fix it". There's also a degree of management turnover to consider, and the fact that many older volunteers aren't "cut out" for computerized work.

Thoughts, experiences, anecdotes? Of course, there's a massive difference between the local station depot and the state-run railroad museums--or is there?

Alexander:

It's difficult for a Museum such as ours to respond to a poll like the one you have started here. We're an all-volunteer group so we use what's at our homes or offices (shh, don't tell anyone).

Here at home (I'm semi-retired) I use Microsoft Office 2003 software for our operations mailing list, I use Outlook to send out operations related e-mails, MS Publisher to produice our newsletter, Adobe Acrobat to convert documents so I can e-mail them to all our folks, etc. Our membership services guy uses MS Access for that stuff. Our accountant (again a volunteer) uses QuickBooks. Our history magazine editor, Aaron Isaacs uses a Mac for his work but we do have a commercial firm produce the Twin City Lines that Aaron edits.

So, I guess the difference in responses would correlate to whether a museum is all-volunteer, has part or full-time staff, how many they have, etc.

At SVRy we have only one full time employee, and a part time accountant. We have computers in our office running uSoft Windows XP with Word for letters and notices, Outlook Express for email and Internet Explorer for internet connections (by slow phone).

As Trainmaster I use my home computer with Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Word for general text editing, Excel for volunteer crew assignments matrix and PowerPoint for presentations at our annual Spring Safety Weekend. Outlook Express for email and Internet Explorer for reading forums like this. I also generate decals for sale in the gift shop on CorelDraw 7 and an Alps 5000 printer.

Our accountant uses her home computer and has the same SW on one of the office computers, but I am not certain which accounting SW it is.

dan

If possible on the poll, I'd like to check three boxes. At National Capital Trolley Museum we use Past Perfect for the archives, QuickBooks for accounting, and MS Office for routine publications and reports.

Wesley

I've used Excel (and other spreadsheets) since the halcyon days of Lotus 1-2-3 running on 4.77 Mhz 8086 processors and 5.25” floppies.

As much as spreadsheets are wonderful tools, they can be disasters in the making. The good thing about Excel is that its intuitive, visual, and for most applications, requires minimal training. It also contains a lot of tools that increase its flexibility-but in some cases, those charcteristics and tools encourage misuse. People start using spreadsheets for everything. Pivot Tables, autofiltering and other “power user” tools all encourage use of the spreadsheet “as a one size fits all” tool in situations where a database or another application would be more effective. This effect is enhanced by the new "big grid". Worse, MS keeps tossing surprises. Excel 2007 for example, introduced a new file format (.docx), a new interface (the "ribbon") and had a goofy multiplication error (since patched). While its still 2007, MS is already working "office 14", which is likely to be released as Office 2009 or 2010.

There's even a group in Europe that is dedicated to the identification, assessment and mitigation of spreadsheet errors. Detection of errors is difficult and prevention is only effectively accomplished by following the IT department recommendations listed below.

IT pros encourage treating spreadsheet applications as any other custom application-subjecting it to structured design and testing. Because its difficult to define a threshold of what spreadsheet is big, complicated, historical etc to require IT oversight, it rarely happens. There's a rather famous example of a utility company making an error in the tens of millions because of a formula error in a spreadsheet.

As a general rule, as the spreadsheet gets larger, contains more formulas and contains and the more historical data, the more likely it is that you should be using a different application. There are tons of small IT shops, some “tech-focused”, some “business focused”. (The latter are sometimes part of a CPA firm) that might be of help, although it will likely involve billable hours.

Still, it would definitely be worth getting expert advice. The right solution might require training and if the organization is staffed by significant numbers of volunteers, retirees, part timers, etc. where training will be difficult or resisted, that could be a problem, but necessarily so. A good IT shop can for example, design a good MS Access database solution (or if there’s heavier requirements Sequel Server) that will have a friendly interface without any need to understand the abstract concepts of relational databases or tables.

In my line of work, an excel (or any) spread sheet is considered an un-controlled unsecurable document from a quality aspect
(insert legal/liability discussion here)
that means they are to easily to edit (accidentally or not)
write protects are useless
just copy and paste a couple lines at a time, and you have the exact doc unprotected
they are great tools used as "a big paper spool calculator"
calculating their butt off and showing all your work in the process
but thats all they should be used for (and not even that if you aren't manually checking the work)
they are never going to be as good as a database for what a database is designed to do. sort, secure, organize lots of data

the traps many people fall into are from the just "use it for now" attitude and when you go to fix it right, its a nightmare
then you end up with a whole bunch of redundent data entry, & lost or corrupted data.

do it as right as possible, spend until it hurts right up front (and it will), legally secure all copies needed for all computers (and the software police WILL know), consider all computers junk at 2 years old,

and then get on to shovelin' a little coal


dr

Here at the Trolley Museum of New York, MS Access is used for the collections database, membership/donor database, and volunteer hours database. The treasurer uses DacEasy for accounting. The administrator uses Excel for his day-to-day stuff.

Your poll question implied Access can 'come with the computer.' Access isn't in the Office suite that comes with Windows/Vista systems. You have to get the Professional Office package (which we buy discounted through TechSoup). We're still on the 2003 version, but it works fine in Vista.

How many organizations use CAD software for engineering or other purposes. (documenting locomotive and car designs, etc) We do a lot of our engineering in-house with volunteers and the software is invaluable. One use that we have made is to diagram the location of cars in our buildings with scaled lengths. The diagram is then used to evaluate whether a proposed car move is feasible. With 47 cars in three buildings, this saves a lot of time over running around with a tape measure every time a change is proposed. I know at least one other museum has adopted this idea.

Each person uses the CAD package that they already have. Surprisingly, convertibility has not been a problem.

We used a low-tech method last time we did a big car move: cut pieces of paper to scale for each car and draw a rectangle to represent the building on another piece of paper. Move the little pieces of paper around until everything fits inside the box.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Illustrator or Photoshop. Art mentioned CAD software, and we certainly use that often enough for the design of parts, etc. We are using CAD to layout the graphic design on equipment in some cases, basically to see how everthing will fit. Illustrator is then used for designing the graphics themselves. We haven't done a whole lot of it yet, but it does look promising. The uses of both programs should be a boon to the displays people at any organization I would think.

Dave.

At SRI, we use pastperfect, and while not officially SRI, I personally run a private website for SRI volunteers that runs PHPbb, and Coppermine photo gallery, as well as some scheduling, and project management software that will soon be available for SRI members to use.

The message board has had some recent problems that saw a decline in our user base (it was hacked by someone, and most of the posts were wiped out), but it was at one time a very useful way for volunteers to communicate. I hope it will regain that usefulness.