Back in May the New Ipswich Historical Society purchased a museum management software package called “PastPerfect”. This will allow us to re-catalog our collection of objects, photographs, and documents. It also allows us to track our members, and contributions. The 1992 and 1996 inventories were very professionally done, which makes transferring information to the new program fairly easy if time consuming. We chose this program because many local historical societies and the New Hampshire Historical Society use this program.
Several of our board members visited the Nashua Historical Society for a preview of the capabilities of PastPerfect. We had a couple of training sessions at the New Ipswich Library, and have been cataloging objects at our building for several weeks. John Poltrack has been cataloging our photo collection. Rick Blanchette has organized our membership data.
We have had some great people volunteering at the society building:
Kathy Muhonen, Louise DelPapa, Rick Blanchette, Jack Klein, Peggy Lee, Sharon and John Rosenfelder.
Together we have logged several hundred hours of volunteer time. The cataloging procedure involves looking at the old inventories, finding the object, photographing, recording its location, and entering the data in the new program.
After we catch up on transferring information from the old databases, we will be able to record new acquisitions that had not been previously documented.
Kim Black had cataloged many of our paper artifacts, and this information can be entered into PastPerfect.
We anticipate that this project will take many months, but will allow us to better know what we have. We will then be able to group our collection into more logical displays. E.g. all the kitchen items, or all the military items together. We will also be able to group the photos in logical groups, families, buildings, mills, gatherings, etc. The same with documents: letters, business information, and newspaper clippings.
At some future time, much of this information will be available to the public on line. At this time we have cataloged about 130 objects and 80 photographs.
The program can also generate tag labels that can be attached to items.
We thank the members of the New Ipswich Historical Society for helping us with this project, and for bringing us into the 21st century.
If you are interested in helping financially or with cataloging, contact any board member or stop by Wednesday or Thursday mornings between 9:00am and noon at the society building on Main Street.
Thanks, John Rosenfelder, President New Ipswich Historical Society
Remember it only costs $15 to become a member
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