Archivist/Curator Deborah Chapman last updated you on the Salmon Arm Museum’s database conversion nearly a year ago (It’s done! Sort of!!!). I’ve been hard at work on it so I figured it was time for an update. PastPerfect has a lot to offer, and for someone who speaks database I think it is great! Unfortunately, learning the ins and outs of a new and complex database can be a hassle for those with limited hours to dedicate to its mastery. There was definitely some frustration during the migration progress, but Deborah and the volunteers did their best to remain positive. A visual reminder of all the benefits that come with PastPerfect was helpful.
When I showed up to the Salmon Arm Museum in April the volunteers were nearing completion on the months-long process of standardizing the object naming conventions to the Nomenclature 4 vocabulary installed in PastPerfect. Nancy, Barb, and James worked record by record to resolve the ‘unclassifiables.’ While an excellent software for visualizing, describing, and searching, PastPerfect is not an ideal environment for mass updates and data cleaning. Should it have been done prior to migration? Yes, probably. Unfortunately, there was a time crunch as the old Access database’s days were numbered. Unlike the spreadsheet-like Access previously used, PastPerfect shows us things one record at a time. The same goes for editing. The only alternative is the global update function which has limitations and if not used with caution can be disastrous.
For example, (and this is a completely made up scenario) you could tell PastPerfect to change the Object Name for all 23 objects called ‘rock’ to Specimen, Geological… but it would also change every object called ‘rocking chair’ to Specimen, Geologicaling chair. You only make that mistake once. Here’s where math comes in, though. Changing the 7 Specimen, Geologicaling chair records individually to Chair, Rocking takes less time than manually changing both the 23 rock records and the 7 rocking chair records. My experience and education emboldens me to use the global update function where possible, but it can’t be used for many of the time consuming tasks on our to-do list. So here we remain working away.
Over the past few months I have oriented myself to both PastPerfect as well as how the Salmon Arm Museum and Archives collections have been described. It will take time, but the data can and will be optimized for the new database environment.
I am feeling pretty confident! Now I just have to get the volunteers on the same page. This month I have been working on a procedural document with a complete processing process – from donation to accession to cataloguing/description to storage. Who is responsible, how to do it, and most importantly, how to do it efficiently and accurately in PastPerfect.
Onwards!
Tags: database, past perfect