When we began the TMS installation, we formed a TMS project group made up of the Registrar office staff, the curatorial staff and a few other staff with major TMS involvement.

Before data entry began, this group met weekly for a long time to discuss exactly what information would be put into a field and how the field would be formatted.

We did this for the object module and most of the constituent module.

Whenever a drop-down menu can be used, the project group negotiated what choices would be in the menu and when they would be used. This is especially critical for the classification selections and the roles selections.

The project group also decided to follow the Getty ULAN naming convention for all constituents.

Finally, we drew up general guidelines for formatting data in the fields and trained the keypunchers to follow the guidelines.

Two important changes we made in TMS was to take away object and constituent record deletion capability for all users except the System Administrator. This eliminates the inevitable tragedy of a user deleting important records that cannot be replaced.

A full-time staff technician/ system administrator is essential for TMS.

I hope this is helpful,  David Parsell,  Yale Art Gallery



 At 09:40 AM 7/16/2002 -0300, Anne Marr ( wrote:
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word">
I don't know what happened to the rest of my message, I must have hit send before I was finished.  I mean all of those Linda.  I have been attempting to produce an institutional data-entry manual, and I'm sure there must be a lot of you out there with much more experience than I have, who could share their experiences.  For instance do you have your own classification system or do you use Chenhall (sp?) or something else?  Really, any advice would be welcome, even to know what pitfalls to avoid would be a help.
 
As far as the technical and administrative end of things are concerned, I admit I am out of my technological depth.  We have a casual IT person who looks after that at the moment but I feel that the museum really needs a dedicated IT position.
 
Anne
-----Original Message-----
From: Linda Pulliam [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 15 July 2002 5:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Policies & Procedures
Ann,
 
Do you mean data entry standards, (capitalization, punctuation, etc.), field use standards, or process standards?
 
Linda Pulliam
Manager of Collections Information
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Anne Marr ( [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2002 4:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Policies & Procedures
I'd like to introduce myself as a new user to the group.  My name is Anne Marr and I am the Registrar at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.  We have been using TMS for over a year now but we are still wrestling with problems with our data, not, I hasten to add, Gallery Systems' fault, but rather with the original data that was converted from CHIN (Canadian Heritage Information Network).  Just trying to get my head around the idea of relational versus flat-file databases is big deal to me!  I would, like Jack, be interested in the experiences of others so that I don't feel that I'm reinventing the wheel trying to develop standards and .
 
Regards
 
Anne Marr
-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Edwards [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 28 June 2002 1:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Policies & Procedures
Alberta Community Development is a new user to TMS.  We are looking for documentation, policies, procedures, best practices, etc related to the implementation of TMS.  Any information that is available would be appreciated.
 
Regards
Jack Edwards