PastPerfect

     PastPerfect is a program that small museums use to catalog their collections. For my internship, I had to accession the Sanford High School Collection into PastPerfect. Accessioning is to transfer the records for archival material into the cataloging system, in order to gain intellectual control over the holdings.
     To accession the collection into PastPerfect, I assigned the collection an I.D. number. At the PHC, the I.D. numbers start with the letters "SM," which stands for student museum. The Sanford High School Collection's I.D. number is SM-13-1720. After that was assigned, I added the collection to PastPerfect, entering information about the collection. It asks for information, such as the date range of the collection, type of items, description of the collection, condition, location, etc.. Then, under "list," I added every item from the collection. This is a lot quicker than how it was previously done. Before, each item in a collection was assigned its own I.D. number, which was very time consuming. Now, museums are moving toward the previously mentioned method.
     The process took me only one day at the PHC to complete. Now the Sanford High School Collection is properly accessioned into PastPerfect.
     Until next time, Samantha