Members in smaller organisations, particularly those using CollectionsMosaic (CM), may be interested in the article in the FAHS newsletter about the Royal WA Historical Society's recent change from CM (p.18)and the results of the recent FAHS survey into historical societies.
One of the questions related to catalogues in museums/historical societies:
" While making their comments, some societies identified which software they are using, although we did not ask for that here ( it was asked in Q31). The answers in Q31 are more complete.The numbers shown in answer to this question (Q26) are:
Mosaic (21), InMagic DB/TextWorks (9), Victorian Collections (4), Excel (3), Access (2), Spydus (1), e-Hive (1), LibraryThing (1), Bookcollectorz (1) and Monash University's Digital Dilemmas (1).
One society said that, for its catalogue, it uses a database "designed for our particular use and needs".
One society wrote as follows - (submitted in upper case, which we have retained) :
WE DON'T LIKE THE SOFTWARE OPTIONS AVAILABLE AND WOULD LIKE TO KNOW OF A USER-FRIENDLY CATALOGUING SOFTWARE THAT OUR VOLUNTEERS CAN USE .
The FAHS has been aware of this need for some time and has been looking for a solution. An extensive study of collection management software has been undertaken in conjunction with the RHSV. The RHSV is on the point of announcing eHive as its recommendation and has acquired eHive software for a trial period. FAHS will follow with its recommendation as soon as possible after receiving the results of the stage two survey on Collection Management in the next few weeks. "
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