I don't know if this will help with your situation or not as your system is
probably already well established, but thought I'd share anyway.  
We actually have 'Unknown' as a constituent, and we link that to
artist/maker etc.  For the place name, we don't use the geography assistant,
we use the Thesaurus feature and use Geography xrefs and have Types such as
'Place of origin' where we link the place name.  If there is a possible or
probable with it, we can add it to the remarks field.  
So if we don't know who did it, but know it's probably from Hartford,
Connecticut, we'll do Maker=Unknown constituent, and GeoXrefs=Place of
origin Hartford\Hartford County\Connecticut etc., and in remarks add
'Probably made in Hartford'. 

Hope that helps a little bit. 

Diane 


========================================
Diane Lee, Collections Manager Ÿ 860-236-5621 x242
Connecticut Historical Society


-----Original Message-----
From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Stephanie Hansen
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 6:26 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