Bárdossy Pál

Veszprém County Museum Management

Computerised cataloguing was begun in Veszprém County Museum Management in the first half of the 1990s. In line with the possibilities available at that time, the work was begun with a DOS-based database manager, the Ariadne programme. This programme uses a somewhat extended dBase based database structure. The user surface preserves the conventions of the early 90s.

Due to the development of data input and computer technology, the demand is becoming increasing urgent for us to work with a database management system which corresponds to present requirements, and is capable of:

- providing a manipulation surface which is secure and easy to use,

- operating on a network, with several workstations,

- exchanging data with other databases,

- meeting Internet publication requirements.

The task outlined above is enormous, whereas the financial means of the museum are minimal, so only competitions can take us closer to the solution, primarily the Telematika competition. The scarcity of resources is also evident here, however, in that on a four year average, the amount gained from the competition has not attained to one third of the money bid for, and this fact is highly detrimental to the efficiency of development. The deficient sum must first of all be devoted to the acquisition of equipment and software; much less than is necessary is left for maintenance and the personal expenditure needed for the acceleration of data input.

The construction of a network as indispensable hardware prerequisite for up-to-date data management was successfully initiated from the competition money won in 1999 and acquired in 2000.

From 2001, the task is to obtain and put into operation data output equipment and database management software.