Agreed, using TGN's a good approach as its range of equivalent terms is
broad; it's free with TMS; TMS incorporates very functionality to allow
easy querying of equivalent terms - and there's not much point
re-inventing the wheel (and it's a big wheel...). One issue we have,
however, encountered at Tate is disagreement about TGN's choice of
'preferred' terms.

Beyond that, maybe go for the current name of a geographical area etc as
preferred term, with others (historical) as equivalents? You might want
to take a different approach with terms for 'culture' to take account of
the extent to which e.g. 'Iranian' really is equivaent to 'Persian' -
thinking there might be a conflation here of 'geography' and 'culture'
that's too straightforward? Guess the key is consistency and ability to
get intended results back (by the public or internally, within
museum/gallery etc)

On a related theme, does anybody have any experience of using the Union
List of Artist Names with TMS. For example, using to record
'nationality' and 'events'. Does anybody have a licensed copy? Woud it
be useful to incorporate into TMS (maybe an issue because it's a
compiled resource?)

Jon
Tate


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeri Moxley [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: 12 January 2005 15:47
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Iran vs Persia


Hi Jenny,

For search-ability, I'd recommend using the TGN if you've got it, or
creating local thesaurus terms for geographical regions and culture
names. That way, you can retrieve the records regardless of which term
users choose for their search.  Curatorial staff would need to
conference on what they want to be the 'public' name used in label copy.
I've seen some TMS databases with culture and geography entered in the
Culture field and the Geography Assistant for 'public' purposes, and
again as thesaurus terms for 'scientific' or research purposes - where
the thesaurus terms are nested in appropriate hierarchy and have all the
necessary alternate spellings, historical names, etc. as equivalent
terms. I've also seen this done with object names for certain types of
collections.


Best,

Jeri

****
Jeri L. Moxley
TMS Specialist
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
(212) 423-3509


-----Original Message-----
From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Wilker, Jenny
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 3:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Iran vs Persia

We have this geographical region in our database in many ways. [Our data
came from many sources; this is still cleanup time.)

What do you do?
We have in the Culture field:
Iranian (Persian)
Persian (Iranian)
Persian
Iranian

In the Geography field we have
Iran
Persia
Iran (Persia)
Persia (Iran)

We have mostly rugs, arms and armor, paintings, and ceramics from this
geographical area.

This, of course, is just one example of the problem of the historical
version the modern day name for a place.

Thanks,
Jenny

Avanti!
Jenny Wilker, Ph.D.
Collection Management System
Information Services
Philadelphia Museum of Art