The MRP Collection Manager

Collection Management Software for all kinds of collections

View collection as a list. (Click on image for a larger view)	View details for a single item (Click on image for a larger view)	View images in larger windows (Click on image for a larger view)

The MRP Collection Manager is software for collectors. Whatever you collect - art, coins, maps, trading cards, vintage photographs, etc. etc. - there is nothing that increases the enjoyment and value of your collection more than a good record of what you own. There are actually many software packages that have been developed to help people catalog collections. Some of these software packages are specialized (for example, for wine collectors) and are tied in with databases that allow you to look up information - including prices - about what you own. Some are extremely elaborate (and very expensive) and are aimed at museums or other large institutional collections. And then there are many low-end, very inexpensive collection management programs; these are mostly simple list managers that let you record a handful of attributes - and perhaps a few images - of each of the items in a collection. The low-end programs typically have little flexibility, and often they provide you with much less capability than simply using a spreadsheet or word processing program to keep track of your collection (which, in fact, is something that a lot of collectors do).

A little history about me (Jeremy Pool) and my company, MapRecord Publications (MRP):

I have been a software developer for over 35 years and a map collector for about 15 years. In 2001 I founded MapRecord Publications to provide collectors of antique maps with information about the antiquarian map trade. MRP's initial product, the Antique Map Price Record CD-ROM, is a flexible and fast database product, containing over 25 years of dealer and auction-house data about the sale of old maps. MapRecord Publications continues to issue this CD-ROM annually (updated with an added year's worth of new data - the database now has over 113,000 records), and it is widely considered the standard source of data about map prices, used by collectors and dealers around the world. More information about the Antique Map Price Record (AMPR) CD-ROM can be found at www.MapRecord.com.

A couple of years ago I decided to add a "map collection manager" to the AMPR CD-ROM. I had discovered that many map collectors (including myself) had never found a really good way to keep track of their collections. Some map collectors used Excel to keep a list of what was in their collection. Others just kept notes in a text file or Word document. Many simply kept notes on paper, and others had no system at all. The Map Collection Manager - which was added as a free add-on on the AMPR CD-ROM - has been well received, and a number of customers asked me why I didn't make this software available more generally to collectors, since, at heart, it is applicable to any kind of collection. The MRP Collection Manager is the response to this question. I have taken the Map Collection Manager, broadened it, generalized it, and made it more flexible, to make it attractive as a management tool for anyone who collects.

What makes a good collection management program?

Flexibility - Every collector will have his or her own idea about what attributes are important to track. Perhaps you collect paintings, and, in addition to recording the price you paid for each painting, you want to separately keep track of the price you paid for framing each piece and, perhaps, also information about any restoration work you had done (who performed the work; how much it cost). These may sound like unusual requests, but just about any collector will have ideas about what to record about their collection, and any software being used as the collection database should be flexible enough to allow this.

Functionality - A collection manager should allow you to do more than just enter and look at your data records. You should be able to:

• Search
• Sort
• Subset
• Import and Export data
• Print
• Customize
• Handle images
• Handle multiple collections
• Allow easy backup of data

Robustness - It may seem silly to mention this, but many programs are not designed to handle unusual data. If a program gives an error (or, worse yet, crashes and loses your data) when you mis-type (for example, enter a non-numeric value for a numeric field) or request some inappropriate operation (for example, ask to display images for a record that has no images), the program can turn into more of a nuisance than an aid.

Ease of use - It is a bit of a cliché to say that a software program should be easy to use. But it is certainly true that if it is hard to figure out how to use a program (either due to obscure methods needed to perform various operations, or inadequate - or wholly absent - documentation), it is a real drawback.

I have tried very hard to make the MRP Collection Manager flexible, functional, robust and easy to use. (Of course, you might expect me to be a bit biased about this!)

One other characteristic that I have tried to build into the Collection Manager is a certain elegance and professionalism in the presentation of your collection data. The Collection Manager allows you to control formatting, including:

• use of italics, underlining, and paragraph breaks
• user-specified font choice for displayed or printed report pages
• support for accented and special characters
• support for hyperlinks for navigating to related records
• control over thumbnail image size within an item-description page
• complete control over order of fields within an item-description page
• clean pagination in printed reports

To give you an idea of what these features provide, take a look at the image in the middle, at the top of this page. Click on the image to get a full-size view of the window, where you will see various examples of the formatting capabilities.

To further explore the MRP Collection Manager, you can examine the complete MRP Collection Manager User's Guide which is available on the web. Read it or browse it to get a full idea of what the program is and what it can do.

Download a free demo version of the MRP Collection Manager

System requirements: The MRP Collection Manager runs under any of the modern versions of MS/Windows (95, 98, NT, 2000, Vista).

The demo version of the MRP Collection Manager is a fully functional trial version. There is no time limit restriction on the use of the demo version. The only difference between the demo version and the fully licensed version is that with the demo version you are restricted to a maximum of 25 data records in a collection. If you decide to buy the registration key for the fully licensed version, you will not need to download the software again. The registration key that you will be sent (via e-mail) will convert your existing demo version into a fully functional, unrestricted version. Click this button to begin the download:

Purchase a registration key for the MRP Collection Manager

After you have installed the demo version of the MRP Collection Manager and tried it out, you can purchase a registration key for $25. This allows you to convert the demo version to a fully functional, unrestricted version. Also, registering the MRP Collection Manager entitles you to receive customer support and product updates.

To purchase a registration key, click on the "Purchase registration key" button, below. This will take you to a secure payment site, where you can pay with a credit card or using . Your registration key will be e-mailed to you as soon as MapRecord Publications receives confirmation that the payment has been successfully processed. This will usually occur within 24 hours. The e-mail will also contain simple instructions for how to enter the registration key. Please note: The secure check-out will ask you to provide a shipping address (and billing address, if different from the shipping address). However nothing will actually be shipped to that address, since the registration key will be sent to you via e-mail. The request for your shipping address is just how the secure check-out site works to gather the information it needs to process your order.