The National Portrait Gallery enters the most recent name as the preferred
name and the former names in alternate name along with the name types, ie.,
maiden name, married name, former name, alias, pseudonym, etc. We have
been requesting a combined search for preferred and alternate names since we
first went on TMS. To us, separate searches never made any sense.
How would a user know which is the preferred name? Gallery has
promised a combined search in one of the coming upgrades, but I'm not sure which
one. In the mean time, we deal as best we can with two searches for our
constituents.
Linda Thrift
Center for Electronic Research & Outreach
Services
Catalog of American Portraits
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution
P.O. Box 37012
Victor Building, Suite 8300, MRC
973
750 Ninth Street, N.W.
Washington DC 20013-7012
Tel
202-275-1847
>>> Ella Rothgangel
<
[log in to unmask]> 10/28/02 10:58AM
>>>
I was wondering how other TMS users
deal with the issue of constituents that change over time (museums, companies,
and individuals). Do you create
constituent records for all incarnations of a company or museum (say Tiffany for
example) or for the most recent version of the name? If you attach the historic name, how do
you address issues of searching?
Does the Alternate Name section solve this problem? And finally, do the same rules apply for
individuals?
Thanks in
advance!
Ella
Rothgangel
Collections Database
Administrator
Saint
Louis Art
Museum
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