Evaluation of hypertext software to create a public browsing system in a museum Available to Purchase

This study evaluated four different packages containing the hypertext facility for use in a browsing system at a museum. The browsing system envisaged would be on a medical or health topic and would be placed in the permanent exhibition area of the South African Medical Research Council at the South African Museum in Cape Town. The packages evaluated were Hyperties, Guide, KnowledgePro and CoNET. They all run on IBM‐compatible microcomputers. The Hyperties package was found to be the most suitable of the four for the application required. The comparative ease and speed with which a database can be created and the ease of use of a browsing system created with this package were the primary reasons for preferring this program. The experience gained in the study showed that the time which would be required to create the browsing system envisaged using Hyperties would not be excessive. Since the cost of the hardware required for the basic system is also not high, the proposed browsing system could be implemented cost effectively. The implementation of the browsing system did not form part of the study.