Our collection is broad in nature with Asian, African, Native American,
etc., as well as painting and sculpture. We have constituents for named
artists, manufacturers, culture groups, and geographic locations, in keeping
with the way each curator would want information listed on label copy. This
use of constituents also helps with historical geographic and culture groups
that do not conform to current political borders (such as Gandhara). We do
not use "unknown"; we include whatever regional or cultural information is
available for any given object.

We do not use consituents for time periods because that is more
appropriately placed in the date field. We use the date display field to
include period dates so that we can search on the term (Meiji) or the actual
date range. An example is "Meiji period (1868-1912), late 19th century"
(search dates would be 1875-1899).

Suzanne Stephens
Database Administrator
Birmingham Museum of Art


-----Original Message-----
From: Cathryn Goodwin [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 7:54 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Authority control for culture / period terms


Does anyone use the constituents module to manage attribution of works of
art with not named artist?  For instance, creating a PERIOD role and records
for Meiji, Edo,Hellenistic, etc?  Or a CULTURE role to handle Greek, Attic;
Maya; Olmec, etc?

I'm leaning heavily in this direction and would like to hear if anyone has
experience / opinions one way or the other.

thanks
Cathryn Goodwin
Princeton University Art Museum