Dear Joe,

Now imagine having sitters (often just one, but sometimes 2 or 3 or 57)
that display before your artist, and you can see the problem that
plagues the National Portrait Gallery every day on TMS! And try sorting
reports on any of these constituents' names besides the one that
displays first! We have twisted our brains over the issue for years, and
there is no complete solution to the problem. Even the programmers at
Gallery Systems are unable to make it possible for us to see both
sitters and artists in our list views because of this very problem.

NPG has roles just like yours for prints, and they just display in
whatever order they're entered in in our reports (we try to be
consistent.) If there is no "Copy after:", then "Printer:" or
"Publisher:" or whatever follows "Artist:". Can you just print the role
followed by the name to distinguish each and let them go in whatever
order they're entered? If you are using text objects as headings for
each field, like "PRINTER: ", then you can use a subreport for each
different type of constituent and put a select within these subreports
for each particular role?

I'm attaching our accession sheet report in case it's helpful to you.
The artist subreport is a little complicated b/c it's supposed to print
all of our "artists" and "secondary artists" together, but "artists"
before "secondary artists". But you can see how we separated artists
from sitters.

Feel free to write again or call me if this is on the right track for
you and I can be of further assistance.

Susan Garton
Data Administrator
Center for Electronic Research and Outreach Services
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Phone: (202) 633-8554 / Fax: (202) 633-8254
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Joseph Leduc
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 10:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: object-related constituents in reports

Hello,

I've been a subscriber for the little more than a year since our
institution adopted TMS, but this is my first message to the group, and
it's regarding a question that's been driving me crazy.  I've been
trying to put together a new catalog sheet report, almost all of which
is completely straightforward except for one issue that I can't manage
to figure out.  We frequently have objects, especially prints, that have
mutiple Object-Related Constituents--first the artist, then another
artist the work was done after, sometimes a publisher, perhaps a
printer, etc.  The only consistent aspect of the Display Order is that
the creator of the object at hand will be 1, with the "after" artist
generally 2--but if it's not "after" anyone, it's possible that the
printer or publisher will be 2, there's just no way to have a general
rule.  It's the Role that they play that really identifies them.

The problem is, I need to have separate lines on the catalog sheet where
these Consistuents will be displayed all in their proper place.  Getting
the artist to appear is no problem, but how can I get Crystal Reports to
drop the artist's Display Name where it should go, but also sort out the
other Object-Related Constituents to drop into the "Artist After:",
"Printer:", "Publisher:" slots?  I'm hoping there's some simple way that
my inexperience with Crystal has blinded me to, causing much amusement
to the readers of this list before someone takes pity and points it out
to me.  Then again, I haven't seen any report doing this among the ones
from GS or that we've picked up from here, so I'm a little concerned.
Thanks to anyone who can help.  Best wishes--

Joe Leduc, Associate Registrar
Worcester Art Museum
55 Salisbury Street
Worcester, MA 01609-3196
508-799-4406 x.3029
fax: 508-798-8498
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