We have such issues at the ROM, and have two approaches. For a group of fields we call "Output fields," which are used for such things as gallery labels, our "maker" field will include such things as artist(s), including dates if some people like that in their output, or manufacturers, or schools, or cultural-ethnographic groups, like band of origin, for example. It is the "lumping" who made it field - distinct from chronological-specific cultural designations which we put under a "Period" output field. No, really, it works. For what we call our "Data fields" we break everything down to very specific entries, with very specific fields. It's a long list. This involves some degree of duplication at times, but it is the only way to have data we can manipulate, and have output that makes sense across a variety of disciplines. R. _____________________________________________ Dr. Robert B. J. Mason (E-mail: robert.mason at rom.on.ca; fax (416) 586-5877) Dept of World Cultures, Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2C6, CANADA Associate Professor, Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto, 4 Bancroft Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1C1, CANADA web: http://www.utoronto.ca/nmc/mason/mason.html
>>> Cheryl Klimaszewski <cklimaszew at brynmawr.edu> 6/3/2009 4:05 PM >>> I'm writing from the Bryn Mawr College Art and Artifacts Collection, where we have recently completed our initial migration of data from a disparate collection of Access databases to a formal collections management database. Ours is a diverse study collection that includes archaeological and anthropological artifacts as well as fine arts objects. We're wondering how other collections are dealing with cataloging culture and nationality information for objects that have cultural groups as makers as opposed to individual, known makers (also, where the cultural group may or may not always correspond to the same geographical region). Our concerns mainly center around objects of African and Native American origin. Though we're most specifically interested in how this data is stored in the cataloging system (i.e. Is the culture/nationality of the object entered into a designated "culture/nationality" field? Is an artist/creator record created for the entire cultural group? etc.), any general comments on cataloging anthropological and archaeological collections are also welcome. If anyone has a perspective on this that they would like to share, even if it's of the "Oh my god, whatever you do, just don't do it this way" variety, we'd certainly appreciate it. Good wishes, Cheryl -- Cheryl Klimaszewski Collections Information Manager Bryn Mawr College 101 North Merion Avenue Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 office 610-526-5093 cklimaszew at brynmawr.edu _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/
