Dear Anne:
We have the following system:
Before an object comes into the building, it is assigned a number by the
curatorial department and entered into TMS. This number is composed
of an alphabetical abbreviation of the department (AS for Asian),
the year, the next number in the departments sequence, and a "object
number". Ex: AS2002.1.2
When the object comes into the building, the Registrar's office assigns a
Temporary Number. Then if and when accessioned, an Accession
number. Loans remain on the Temporary number until they are returned and
then get a Returned number. The Temporary number and the Return
number are in the same format.
Hope this helps
Lynne Addison
At 02:38 PM 2-6-2003 -0400, you wrote:
Not strictly a TMS question, but
does have some relevance. When an object
comes into the Museum as a potential acquisition do you assign a number
to
it and create an object record? What numbering system do you
use? We just
started doing this when we got TMS and we use the reverse of the
future
accession number e.g. 23.2002 would become 2002.23 once the Deed of Gift
was
signed. This was a bit shortsighted as the acquisitions by year in
TMS is
sorted by the accession date and not the object number. The
accession date
for us is the date when the Deed of Gift is signed, so if the Deed
for
2002.23 was signed before 2002.2 the list is all out of whack. I
would
appreciate it if anyone could suggest a better way of doing this.
In the
days before TMS we didn't assign a number at all and all we had were
paper
records.
Thanks,
Anne Marr
Registrar
New Brunswick Museum
L.Lynne Addison
Associate Registrar
Yale University Art Gallery
Tel: 203.432.0604
Fax: 203.432.7159