Vernon CMS 9.0

Version 9.0 includes two new datafiles, a new report type and a number of enhancements and changes to existing functionality.

Correspondence file

We’ve introduced a new file in the Cataloguing module to record details of correspondence relating to your institution’s collection and collection management activities.

Correspondence records can be used to document any type of communication, historic or contemporary, and can be linked to records in almost all of the main Cataloguing datafiles (with the exception of Diary) and any of the Activities files.

New Inward Rights, Reproduction & Use

A new activity file has been created to track rights sold or granted to your organisation. For example, you might have a contemporary artwork in your collection for which you do not hold the copyright. The artist or copyright holder may grant you the right to reproduce an image of the artwork for a print publication, such as an exhibition catalogue. The Inward Rights file can be used to record the details of this agreement/licence.

There are fields for recording the agent or rights holder and their contact details, details of the agreement/licence, as well as research into copyright ownership (this is an important part of deciding whether a work can be considered orphaned). Multiple objects can be linked to a single Inward Rights record, but all these objects will need to share the same rights start and end date, and be covered by the same agreement.

Introducing Banded Reports

Version 9.0 features an all-new report type. Banded reports are report templates that can be custom built for your organisation by Vernon Systems. They provide sophisticated reporting options currently not available with other report types in Vernon CMS.

Banded reports have more flexibility in report layout than Listing reports. They can be formatted to display images in Field (Across the Page) orientation and, unlike Word Merge reports, are capable of displaying multiple images per record.

Banded reports also support the nesting of information through the use of sub-reports. This enables data from different files to be displayed in a single report, e.g. a banded report for an Activity file could include a sub-report from the Object file, so that detailed object schedules can be included as part of a loan agreement or condition report.

Bulk Task Update

A new bulk tool has been added to the Tools menu, for adding tasks and costs to Object and Activities records in bulk. For example, you might need to add the task ‘Research Copyright Ownership’ to a group of Object records, or add the task ‘Facilities Report’ to a group of loan records.

Sundry enhancements

There’s a long list of other new features. These include:

• Supervisor option to log other users off the system
• New measurement fields in the Person file
• Authority assisted term list for the Distinction/Rank field in the Person file
• More flexible options for selecting fields to include in ‘Group – Down the page’ report
• Valuations by part

The upgrade installation file, upgrade instructions and “What’s New in Version CMS 9.0” can all be accessed from the Customer Support Portal ‘Upgrades & Updates’ section.