David,

 

At MFA, Boston, our library staff make our new Bibliography records and
link our objects to them. They will soon start using the z3950 tool
available from Gallery Systems to facilitate the creation of new bib
records by importing data from FLO (our local federation of art
libraries) directly into TMS. For the most part, we only make bib
records for publications that are in our libraries.

 

We have written a report for the library that they use when a patron
asks what has been written about a particular object. They print out
details (call numbers, locations, etc.) of all of the publications that
have the object linked to them, and give the list to the patron.

 

Although I am a big fan of the Bib Module and would use it exclusively,
some curatorial departments prefer to use the fields in the Object
Module.

 

We make the following distinction between the Bibliography and Published
References fields:

 

Bibliography - used for general publications about the type of object
(but do not have any reference or image of any MFA objects)

 

Published References - used for publication details about the object.
Some of our curatorial departments prefer to use this field as they can
enter references to publications that we do not have in our library.

 

Hope this is of some help.

 

Linda Pulliam

Head of Collections Management

 

From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Aylsworth, David
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 2:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Librarians in TMS

 

Can I pester you all again?  Our library staff loves TMS, which is great
since they are often the first interaction with the public where
interested people go to ask if we have something in the collection that
isn't on view.  They have their own detailed way of cataloguing, and
their own database for the book collection, and do not want to start
using the Bibliography module of TMS for that.  They do, however, want
to put data about books in their collection into the Bibliography or
Published References text fields in TMS.

 

They would like their reference staff to easily be able to locate books
that refer to objects in the collection, while doing a search for the
objects in TMS.

 

Naturally, I'm excited that they're excited.  I have asked them to come
up with their own procedures for how they would enter data and retrieve
it, and they came up with some questions for me that I couldn't answer,
so I need your help:

 

1.       What is the difference between "Bibliography" and "Published
Reference"?  (I've got my own ideas, but I'm curious how others have
made the distinction)

2.       How many characters does each field hold?

3.       Can we change the tag labels on these fields if we wanted to
describe them differently or repurpose them?  (I thought this was a
simple questions, but I couldn't find either in dbconfig, so I couldn't
answer it)

4.       Can they put a URL into the text field that might take a user
over to a place on the intranet or even to a spot in their system's
database?

 

Any life experiences that you have about this type of thing would be
greatly appreciated.  

 

Thanks as always,

 

David

 

David Aylsworth

Collections Registrar

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

telephone:  713-639-7824

fax:  713-639-7780