Nestled in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, the Raupp Museum stands as a testament to the importance of preserving local history and making it accessible. With a commitment to empowering their community to participate in preservation and an ever-growing collection that spans generations, the Raupp Museum staff sought to streamline collections management, leading to the transition from PastPerfect to CatalogIt. Learn about the Museum's transition from this legacy system to CatalogIt, exploring the motivations, challenges, and successes that shaped their journey toward more effective collections management, cultural preservation, and community engagement.
The Raupp Museum is dedicated to preserving and sharing the heritage of Buffalo Grove, Illinois. As part of the Buffalo Grove Park District, the Raupp Museum is home to a collection of archives, objects, and photographs representing the village’s history. As the cultural preserver of Buffalo Grove’s past, the Museum centers on accessibility and provides educational programming for area residents and beyond. “Part of our mission is to make the collection as accessible as possible, including all the people who cannot come to the Museum to access the collection in person,” said Marina Mayne, Raupp Museum Registrar and Public Educator.
Marina had this mission in mind when she encountered CatalogIt at the 2022 American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) conference. She had already been researching new cataloging systems to streamline the Museum’s documentation and web publishing processes when she saw a demonstration of CatalogIt at the conference. The Raupp Museum staff had been using two different systems to document and share their collections: the desktop-based CMS, PastPerfect, and the open-source web publishing platform, Omeka. Using two different systems was tedious for Marina and her growing team of volunteers. “It was proving to be a lot of work because I would have to upload things into both PastPerfect and Omeka, so I had to do it twice,” said Marina. “Additionally, our volunteer program was growing, so I wanted a system that was easier to train our volunteers on so that they could work on our collection, as well.”
Dissatisfied with the complexities of using both PastPerfect and Omeka, Marina sought an all-inclusive solution and ultimately selected CatalogIt as the Museum’s new CMS. “We needed something both comprehensive and affordable,” said Marina. “What ultimately made us switch from one to another was the ease of access for volunteers,” she continued. “The interface was the easiest for people to use. Even our volunteers who have seen both systems have expressed how easy it is to use CatalogIt.” In addition to ease of use, CatalogIt’s cloud-based system accommodates Marina’s team working from various locations in the Museum or working from home. “CatalogIt makes it easier to access [the collection] from multiple devices,” said Marina.
Additionally, the mobile app and its built-in QR Code functionality simplified Marina’s documentation and introduced unexpected benefits. “The QR Code option was great too- I’ve integrated that into our labels and inventories within the collections boxes,” said Marina. She now generates location QR Codes from the CatalogIt app and applies them directly on the Museum’s collection boxes. ”That ended up being an additional plus that I was not anticipating!” The ability to easily access object data through a quick scan of the QR Code on the outside of the box proved to be preferable for internal organization. “Having the QR Code to scan is better for the care of the object,” she said. “You can just bring up [the entry record] on your phone to see the object. It’s a great conservation and preservation tool because you don’t have to open the box or handle the artifacts to figure out everything inside. The QR Codes make it easy to find that information fast.”
The transition to CatalogIt marked a significant improvement in the Raupp Museum’s ongoing documentation process. The richness of relationships, tags, and a focused approach to capturing details became integral to their cataloging, enabling the Museum to document more of their objects’ stories. “There is so much about the life of an object that you can include, such as exhibits, relationships the object has to other places, events, or people, what has happened to it in its condition, etc,” said Marina. “You can put some of that information in other systems, but [with CatalogIt] it’s easier.”
With a new CMS in place, publishing the Museum’s collection to the web via the CatalogIt HUB became a crucial step. “Part of the Museum's mission is to preserve and make the collections accessible- I think the HUB helps us in a big way to do that second part,” said Marina. A large portion of the Raupp Museum’s collection is available for anyone to browse at any time, easily discoverable on their CatalogIt HUB page, which they conveniently link to from their website. Having a searchable online database has aided in engaging local researchers and students working on projects. “We hope that sharing the collection online has helped serve all different parts of our community,” said Marina.
Since the Museum first began to publish to the HUB, the growing online collection became a bridge for the Raupp Museum's community, extending beyond physical boundaries. “Founding [Buffalo Grove] families have descendants all over the United States,” Marina said. “We have found [the online collection] to be useful with genealogy research, or even looking back at the history of your school and old yearbooks.” Real-life stories emerged, like community members identifying family members, contributing memories, and enhancing the overall narrative of the collection. Marina recalled a particularly touching encounter with a community member who spotted one of their ancestors in a photo that the Museum had posted on Facebook. The person had lost many family pictures in a fire and was thankful to the Museum for sharing that image online. “It was such a meaningful thing for us,” said Marina. “We want people to connect to their own history and also the town’s history.”
With a comprehensive CMS in place and an ever-growing online collection, Marina encourages other museums to make their collections more discoverable and accessible through web publishing. “It’s really important that we keep putting more information online, and I hope that other small museums can see it too,” she said. “It’s important for the community, schools, researchers, etc.” This is now an integral part of the Raupp Museum’s documentation process. “The system itself is easy to use, and we can control what information people see. We can show as many relationships or information as we would like to,” Marina continued. “We can also group [collection records] by folders that make the most sense for people coming to our website.”
Reflecting on the transition process, Marina advises peers to take advantage of the transition to a new CMS as a good opportunity to clean up data. “It will help you in the future when cataloging things!” She also encourages other museums not to be overwhelmed by CatalogIt’s capabilities. Taking it one step at a time, she suggests adapting features gradually. “When you are choosing a new CMS, don’t be scared by how much you can do in CatalogIt because it’s so, so easy to use! From my experience I’ve learned a lot along the way about how I want to work within the system, either switching over how I do my tags, relationships, reports, or searching,” she said. “Don’t be worried if you don’t know how to fill in all of the information- You can pick and choose what is most important to you, and it’s easy to adapt if you want to make changes.”
Looking ahead, Marina envisions conducting a full inventory of the Museum with the app, making all information available in CatalogIt, and possibly even integrating the API for a seamless, branded appearance for publishing their collections on their own website. With thousands of photographs, objects, and historic receipts from the village’s general store, the Museum aspires to continue digitizing and sharing a wealth of information.
She encourages her peers to embrace cloud-based collections management. “A lot of small museums are volunteer-run or have limited staff. I encourage them to use CatalogIt,” she said. “Their small museum collections are just as important as big museums. We all contribute to collective history and knowledge. The HUB makes it easy for you to make the public included in that process.”
