Our collection includes a large number of European, American, and Asian
decorative arts as well as ethnographic collections, so probably half our
collection would be technically "unknown" makers. Instead of using unknown,
we include in object-related consituents whatever is known about the maker.
We have consituent types of Individual, Institution, Location, and Culture.
One example for an object would be a link to Culture "Songye people" and
Location "Democratic Republic of Congo." The maker information then appears
consistently with our label copy, and people can effectively search on
whatever is known about the object. (We do also structure geography
attributes in consistuents, but that does not take the place of the location
constituents; it provides other search features.)
For decorative arts, we might have a maker of simply "England" if that is
all that is known.
For variations on attributions, we have a constituent role of "attributed"
and then the prefix is customized to either "Attributed to" or "Possibly" or
"Probably" depending on the curator's preference and how much is known about
the object origins.
Suzanne Stephens
Database Administrator
Birmingham Museum of Art
-----Original Message-----
From: Stephanie Hansen [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 5:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 'Unknown' Constituent Records
Dear TMS list-serv,
I'm hoping we can pick up on this old topic again to help me make a decision
on how which field(s) to use for our decorative arts/sculpture "unknown"
constituents. We wouldn't normally display "unknown" for dec arts-but
rather "Costal New England, probably Salem, Massachusetts, or Portsmouth,
New Hampshire" for example. Does anyone else list a place instead of
an "unknown" constituent like this?
The problem is-that most of them are more than 48 charaters
(prefix/suffix/culture) and most of them have qualifiers
like "possibly", "probably", "or", etc.-so they don't work in the geography
fields
either. I'm also afraid it will get too "out of sight/out of mind" in text
entries or
a udf.
Do any of you have constituents that refer to a place-or has anyone come up
with a good solution to listings such as the above?
Many thanks for any advice!!
Stephanie Hansen
Milwaukee Art Museum
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