The Condition Assessment Tool (CAT)

We are pleased to offer the Condition Assessment Tool (CAT) as a free download. Despite the passage of time since its development, no similar specialist databases have been made available to the heritage community.

The CAT was originally designed by the Scottish Museums Council (now Museums Galleries Scotland) as a database tool to help museum staff and conservators to more easily assess collection condition and use the information generated more effectively. It is particularly useful for large projects involving many conservation assessors, all of whom can enter their contributions in a standardised way.

The CAT allows non-conservators to undertake basic assessments of collection condition with a little basic training and the agreement of the meaning of terms, while conservators can use it to provide brief condition reports, treatment proposals and priorities, and estimates for conservation. Project managers can generate reports that summarise the needs of dozens, hundreds or thousands of objects in different categories and locations at the touch of a button.

CAT database screenshot

CAT database screenshot

The CAT is made available by the kind permission of Museums Galleries Scotland.

Please note you have to fill in the webform below in order to have a time-limited link sent to your email address. 

You can download the older version of CAT which works in Windows 98, Windows XP and Windows Vista, together with versions of Microsoft Access up to Access 2003. The file includes the CAT installer, factsheets in PDF format, and help files in Word and PDF format.

You can also download an .exe file of the latest version of CAT (updated 2012) that should work with Windows 7 and more recent versions of Access. Please provide feedback to Will Murray at the Studio if you have difficulties installing or running this file - see our website enquiry form or email info [at] scottishconservationstudio.co.uk.

For those who do not have Microsoft Access installed on their computers, the setup for the latest version of CAT allows you to download and install Access Runtime, a free version of Access made available by Microsoft, so that CAT can be run without the need to have MS Access or MS Office installed on your computer. This is also a useful option when MS Access is already installed, but declines to run CAT.

CAT is open source and users are welcome to modify it and make their modifications available to others.

THE CAT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE CAT SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Download

Due to an unexplained surge in the number of downloads of the CAT in recent months we have been obliged to ask potential users to identify themselves by filling in the form below.

Once you have done that, you'll receive an email with a time-limited link to the files on this website, and you can download one or both versions of CAT, as you wish.