Hi Lee-

Because we are small and our curators tend to co-curate on many objects, we don't have "departments" in the sense that larger museums do.  Because record access can in part be controlled by the department, we opted for the following:

Deaccessioned (for all deaccessioned items formerly in the permanent collection)
Loans (all current loans to the collection)
Other (anything that doesn't fit into other department categories)
Related Accessories (related accessories belonging to permanent collection objects or loans)
Smart Museum (permanent collection items)
University of Chicago (objects in the University of Chicago's collection, but not part of the Smart Museum collection)
Withdrawn (any item that is no longer at the museum or being tracked by the museum)

We're still making adjustments to these departments as we use TMS for more things.

Our classification fields were taken from legacy fields when we converted our FilemakerPro database to TMS.  They are:

African
Asian
Asian- Chinese
Asian- Chinese or Tibetan
Asian- Indian
Asian- Japanese
Asian- Korean
Asian- Persian
Asian- Southeast Asian
Asian- Tibetan
Classical
Oceanic
Pre-Columbian
Western
Western- American
Western- European
Western- North American Indian

Our object name field was blank when we converted (object name information for items that were not titled went into the titled field).  We are slowly populating the field with the most basic term for what the object is (ex. painting, sculpture, chair, etc.) and hope to have this eventually linked to the thesaurus.  For the time being we rely on the converted title field information.  

Angie

Angela Steinmetz, Head Registrar
Smart Museum of Art

-----Original Message-----
From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lee Nisbet \eoj
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2010 1:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Classifications

Dear TMS users,
We are also in the process of setting up TMS and would be very interested in
seeing how other art museums have set up their Department, Classification
and Object Name fields. Any lists you have to share would be much appreciated.

All the best,
Lee Nisbet
Study Storage Supervisor
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
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