Hello everyone.  

It is a little weird to be communicating with you as a TMS user rather
than an employee of GS. Not that serving you wasn't a constant joy, but
I must admit that using TMS every day for the Diebenkorn Catalogue
Raisonné is even more fun.  We are doing the catalogue in association
with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the UC Press.  Many of
you will be hearing from us soon to confirm the data about your
Diebenkorns for inclusion in the Catalogue.  

There is an issue that we have come upon as we move data from the legacy
Exhibition and Bibliography text fields.  We created our TMS database in
1996, and the exhibition and bibliography data in the legacy database
was converted into the object module text fields.  
As we have gone through and moved the data to the Exhibition and
Bibliography modules we have been trying to figure out a consistent way
to hook exhibition catalogues to their associated exhibitions.  Through
the links from an object to both the exhibition record and the
bibliography record for the catalogue we can, of course, deduce that a
certain catalogue is associated with a certain exhibition, but we
haven't been able to come up with a direct link.  The Catalogue Number
in the Exhibition record is just a text field, so that doesn't provide
any level of control.

This is going to matter when we go to publish the Catalogue Raisonné,
because the format we are using calls for the catalogue to be identified
and listed with each exhibition.  We can put the catalogue data in a
text field of the Exhibition record, but that is rather inelegant as it
denormalizes the data.  We could also cook up our own cross-reference
numbers, but we were hoping that the librarians among you might
enlighten us about the "right" way to do this.

Dick

  
Richard Grant
The Richard Diebenkorn Catalogue Raisonné Project
3200 College Avenue #2
Berkeley, CA 94705
510-428-1400
 
PLEASE NOTE MY NEW EMAIL ADDRESS:
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-----Original Message-----
From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Jonathan Thristan
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 9:37 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Exhibition history


Hello!

At Tate we attach Objects to Exhibition records (directly if Tate
collection works or via Loan records if Object records for short term
loans-in to Displays/Exhibitions), as GS suggest, and run reports etc to
retrieve information on Exhibition history.  We record the status of
Objects relative to an Exhibition (agreed, declined, provisional etc) on
the Objects tab of the Exhibition record.  We don't currently use the
Bibliography module.  Secondly, our issue, we wondered whether anybody
has encountered any problems with Object, Exhibition or Loan records
where a Work is borrowed more than once, into different Exhibitions, but
using the same Object record each time (whether problems resulting from
the way TMS functions or from procedures).  

EGs 

if an Object changes hands between the first time it was borrowed and a
second time, then although the correct history of an Object can be
viewed via the Related function, because we display Acquisition related
constituents on Object records, this information doesn't display
correctly to reflect both the present loan and the previous one (I guess
we could simply stop recording Acquisition related Constituent Xref
details for short term loans in...).

If data about an object changes over time i.e. it's re-attributed or its
title is amended, it may be difficult to identify an object that is
currently being considered for loan-in as the same as an Object for
which we already have an Object record. A duplicate object record is
created and the ability to construct a complete exhibition history for
that object becomes problematic.


Regards
Jon

Tate


  



-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Nacke [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: 04 June 2003 17:00
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Exhibition history


Hello,
I have a question about how others may be documenting exhibition history
and bibliographic data using TMS. It appears there are two ways to enter
this information and here at SAM both ways have been used in the past.

Here's the issue:  In the Documentation tab of the Object record, there
is a text field called "Exhibition History".  Here past exhibitions are
cited for that object.  Then in the Related tab of the Object record,
Exhibitions that were entered in the Exhibition module are listed. These
two fields are not combined. Therefore, one must look in both places if
one wants a complete picture of the exhibition history.  Ditto for
Bibliography.

Gallery Systems says:

                1.      Exhibition history
                        Note: this is not an active field; any relevant
information should be entered in the "exhibitions module." Any
information contained in the field is "legacy data" and must be entered
into its correct field.
                        This information can be accessed by selecting
"Exhibitions" from the "Related" pull-down at the very top of the
computer's monitor. Additionally, This information can be exacted
through the object worksheet and other specialized reports.
                        It Says basically the same thing for
Bibliography data. I am curious to know how others are using these
fields to create accessible data for the exhibition history of an object
in the collection.

Scott Nacke
Assistant Registrar/Image Rights Manager
Seattle Art Museum
100 University Street
PO Box 22000
Seattle, Washington 98122-9700
206.654.3130 Direct
206.654.3135 Fax
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