Even before we converted to TMS seven years ago, the administrators of
TMS began weekly meetings with representatives from curatorial
departments and registrar staff about mapping decisions, field use,
procedures, etc. We continued to meet weekly for a few years, then once
every two weeks for a period of time, and now we meet monthly. It is
expected that each person attending the meeting will return to their
departments and share pertinent information. After the meeting a
follow-up email is sent noting what was discussed and what was decided.
Sometimes we invite others to our monthly meetings, depending on the
topics to be covered. These are usually web site staff, rights and
licensing staff, or conservation and collections management staff.

For the past seven years we have also held monthly training sessions on
the basics of TMS and searching. Because we have a wide user base across
the museum, training in the details of the use of TMS by individual
departments is the responsibility of those departments. Individual
departments make use of screen shots with text and arrows and other
resources.

We have data standards and procedures available on our intranet, and
make use of the Shift F1 feature. During training these are demonstrated
as well as the excellent TMS help area.

To facilitate rapid data entry we have make use of the Form Designer to
provide users with all the fields they need, and only the fields they
need on one interface.

We do a lot of data monitoring to help keep users on track.

Best wishes with your work on developing your TMS knowledge base.

Linda Pulliam
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston


-----Original Message-----
From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Ariana French
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 4:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: In-house TMS knowledge base?

Hello all,

I'm interested in hearing from anyone who has developed an in-house TMS
knowledge base or similar resource. For example, a collection of
documents,
email or discussion board threads, web site pages, etc. which contain
guidelines for TMS record entry that may be unique to your institution.
We
are finding duplicate efforts and similar questions being asked across
different departments, so I'm interested to know if anyone has had
success
with developing an internal system for communicating TMS-related issues.

My question is this: What has worked for you, & what hasn't? Do you use
an
intranet, a file share for documents, an offline (i.e. paper) resource,
a
combination of these, or another solution? Does a particular application
or
software meet your needs for this purpose?

Many thanks,

Ariana

--
Ariana French
Database Administrator
Yale University Art Gallery
341 Crown Street
New Haven, CT 06520
phone: (203) 432-7914