- Featuring some of our clients and few of the artifacts from their collections
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Client
Royal Air Force Museum
Hendon, London, England
Description
Hawker Hart Mk. II, produced by Hawker Aircraft Limited in 1931
History
Bil Vernon founded Vernon Systems in 1985 after developing a custom dealer gallery application. From this initial system he saw the need for a general museum and gallery cataloguing system, and he began work on a prototype of the world's first commercial PC-based museum system.
The prototype received an enthusiastic response at the 1986 Conference of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in Buenos Aires. The decision was made to develop a package version of the software, named COLLECTION, built in accordance with the Museum Documentation Association (mda) standards.
Georgia Lowe joined the company in 1987, and COLLECTION was launched at the ICOM and Museum Documentation Association conferences later that year. There was immediate interest, leading to the customisation of the system for our first two clients: Cincinnati Art Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, Australia). The system was enhanced to include many new features and files, and to have extensive configuration options. The flexibility of the system continues to be one of our trademarks.
In 1992 development of the ready-to-run package version, Standard COLLECTION commenced. Institutions of all sizes and collection types around the world have adopted this, with sites later upgrading to the Windows version (released in 1997). We continue to excel in innovative design, with Vernon Browser providing sophisticated web access in 2002.
In 2003 COLLECTION was re-launched as Vernon to create a more unified company and product brand. The Vernon name has long been associated with quality collection management software.
In 2006 Vernon Systems Limited took over support and maintenance of Vernon Access - previously known as QMARK (the Queensland Museums Accessioning Resource Kit). Used widely in smaller institutions, the system is based on MS Access and comes packaged with a Classification system and procedural guidelines for the accessioning process.
Vernon Systems and our products have won several awards, including the 'Most Successful Export Software Award' in New Zealand's Computer Software Awards and 'The KPMG Peat Marwick Export Excellence Award for a New Exporter'.
Along with our headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand, we now also have an office in London. Our broad team includes museum professionals, research and development staff, technical writers, support staff and trainers. At almost any time there is a Vernon Systems representative working for our customers.