When a Spreadsheet is Smarter Than a Database

When we are brought in to work with an organization, in the very first meeting, someone usually puts software on the table.

That is great. Truly. You want to fund your archive. You want to invest in your information infrastructure. I have met dozens of archivists working in established archives who cannot get $1,200 approved to host even an open-source system. So when leadership says, let’s buy something, that is not a bad sign. But here is the thing no one likes to hear. Software does not automatically fix the situation. Sometimes it quietly freezes it in place.

I have worked with several organizations that used to use something like PastPerfect. No one has touched the computer it lives on. No one knows whether it was self-hosted or cloud-based. No one knows the login. No one knows if there is a service contract. It exists in theory, not in practice. This is not an extreme example. We have encountered it more than once.

I met a group that had not opened their PastPerfect database since 2016 and genuinely believed that the information would still be there whenever they returned to it. That might be true. It might not. What operating system is that machine even running? Is it still compatible? Has the hard drive failed? Was there ever a backup?

The issue is not that the software was bad. The issue is that the governance around it was nonexistent.

Software without ownership, documentation, and maintenance becomes a time capsule. It feels like progress at the moment of purchase. Years later, it can become inaccessible, unsupported, or effectively abandoned.

That does not mean you should never use archival software. It means you should earn it.

Any archival collections management system is an intellectual representation of what you physically have. It helps you describe, organize, and retrieve. It does not automatically preserve your materials. It does not create structure where none exists. If you feed it chaos, it will store chaos very efficiently. The same applies to digital material.

If you are producing large volumes of born-digital records and you have long-term preservation obligations, then yes, you may eventually need a true digital preservation system or DAMS. But many organizations are not there yet. What they need first is a clear file structure, documented retention expectations, consistent naming conventions, and verified backups.

We have found that simple Excel spreadsheets created by former staff can be a miracle key. They open. The data is still there. They are readable. Everyone has Excel. Or at least something that can open an Excel file.

That does not mean spreadsheets are magic. They require discipline. Fields need to be used consistently. Definitions need to be documented. There needs to be version control. There needs to be a backup plan. But for many small and mid-sized organizations, a well-structured spreadsheet with a clear schema is more sustainable than a complex database that no one maintains.

The goal is not to avoid software. The goal is to sequence your decisions.

First, understand what you have.

Then create a consistent structure.

Then document context.

Then assign responsibility.

Then select a system that supports those decisions.

Most archival software today charges per-user licenses. That matters. If only two people have access because of cost, you have unintentionally limited institutional memory to two people. When one leaves, the knowledge narrows. That is not a technical problem. That is a governance problem.

We suggest starting with structure and documentation. Use spreadsheets intentionally. Define your fields. Think about future migration. If you ever move into a collections management system, you want to be able to import clean, consistent data.

And do not underestimate the value of a finding aid. A well-written finding aid provides scope, background, and context. It explains why the materials exist and how they are organized. It often lives in a Word document or a PDF. It is accessible. It is readable. It gives your staff and stakeholders immediate orientation, even if you do not have item-level inventory.

Software can be powerful. In the right stage of maturity, it is transformative. But tools do not fix unmanaged systems.

If you have not yet defined who is responsible for your data, how long you keep it, how it is transferred, and how it is backed up, then the software will simply give you a more expensive version of the same problem.