Dear Sari,

The National Portrait Gallery has had a very similar experience to the Nelson-Atkins. We migrated thousands of term attributes into the Objects and Constituents modules and have added new hierarchies into Exhibitions and Loans as well.

Searching on term attributes is very powerful, however I would warn prospective users of two things:

1. you can't do NOT searches on term attributes, for obvious reasons. You can sometimes limp around the problem using object packages, as described by Bob Ferrell of Gallery Systems on Aug. 7 (that was a very helpful email.)

2. Boolean searches involving term attributes often don't work.

And yes, it is difficult to get terms into reports and even more so to get term paths, without which the terms are sometimes meaningless. I've heard suggestions from other Crystal users for how to capture term paths, but it would be so complex and so labor intensive that I've never invested the time.

All in all though, we love our term attributes and only hope querying and reporting on them becomes easier.

Sue

Susan Garton
Data Administrator
Center for Electronic Research and Outreach Services
National Portrait Gallery
Tel:  (202) 275-1850
Fax:  (202) 275-1907
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>>> [log in to unmask] 10/10/06 09:47AM >>>
Hi, Sari,

 

We underwent a conversion from Argus to TMS last year.  Argus has a Lexicon (TMS’s Thesaurus) that is a hierarchical arrangement of terms which assist in searching the database.  Not knowing your level of expertise, I’ll briefly describe by showing an example.  If I wanted to search all European paintings, I could query by the term “European” because the hierarchy is set to show “Italian”, “German”, “Swiss”, “French”, etc. as under the term “European”.  However, because I have defined this structure as such, I can also search for only “French”, if indeed, that is all I want.  Another example is object name “Furniture”.  Under that term I can put “chair”, “table”, “lowboy”, “highboy”, “bureau”, etc.  And under those terms I can further define “chair” as “armchair”, “sidechair”, or “high chair”.  Having terms in a Lexicon demands data validation, so you cut down on the number of typos or variations.  (Of course, if you want variations, you just have to define it as a “see also” term.)  You get the drift.

 

Anyway, when GS migrated our data, the programmer put our defined Argus Lexicon terms into the TMS Thesaurus.  It’s very handy for searching.  As for adding this to a search in query assistant or advanced query, you just go into the dbconfig?Manage?Query Groups.  In the Available Hierarchies, you seek out Objects?Attributes?Terms on the left-hand side of the screen.  You just click and drag Term (from the right-hand side) into the Query Assistant for Objects.  This would hold true for Constituents, Loans, and Exhibitions as well.

 

While having terms defined in a thesaurus prevents runaway typos (though not terms*organizing the thesaurus is a task unto itself!!), there is a downside:  reports.  Crafting a Crystal Report using thesaurus terms is annoying.  It can be done, but I don’t wish it on anyone, but if I did, it would only be on those who have taken CR training at Gallery Systems.

 

Attributes allow for user-defined terms not covered in TMS fields.  I don’t know if I would recommend using Attributes because of the reporting difficulties.  However, because our data migrated in this way, I am dealing with it.  For searching purposes, it’s great.  So, I would recommend using Attributes for that, but try to stay away from having them pulled into reports.

 

Christine

 

Christine Droll, Collections Database Administrator

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

4525 Oak Street Kansas City, MO  64111-1873

tel: 816.751.1333 | fax: 816.561.0499

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________________________________

From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cohen, Sari
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 4:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask] 
Subject: Attributes

 

We are currently not using the attributes field in the object module but we would like to start using it for terms pertaining to subject.

How do other institutions use this field and how can searches be done by attribute type or value?  I don't see a way to add this search to query assistant or advanced query?

Thanks for your help. 

Sari Cohen 

Sari N. Cohen 
Collections Manager 
The Jewish Museum 
1109 Fifth Avenue 
New York, NY 10128 
Tel.: 212-423-3352 
Fax: 212-423-3232 
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