At NMAfA, we have a few exhibition attributes, and I've considered creating them for loans as well, keeping statistics that way. I hesitate to add any extra locations to the location authority, as it is not possible to delete them, only to deactivate. Loan and exhibition attributes would allow users to find those questions easily - it just means more maintenance for the System Administrator. Jeffrey Smith Database Administrator Smithsonian Institution PO Box 37012 National Museum of African Art Room 1110, MRC 708 Washington, DC 20013-7012 [log in to unmask] phone 202-35-74600 ext. 242 fax 202-357-4879 >>> [log in to unmask] 03/21/03 09:10AM >>> Hi all - I too have been toying around with the idea of tracking our off-site exhibition places (Continent, Country, State, City..possibly name of borrowing institution) in the location authority ...but wonder if this isn't being redundant, and complicating the Location Authority - since the off-site locations for a given object will be tracked in the Loans module? I've attached a visual of our Location Authority, so you can see what I'm talking about as far as setting up Countries, Cities, etc. as locations. Again, I am a very new user to the system. In fact, we are just about to sign off on our conversion, and are still not even actively using the system yet. But, I'm curious what people think about this idea - tracking the off-site locations for venues in the Location authority, as well as in the Loans module (like in the Attributes section)....would one be better than the other? What I would like is for people to have the flexibility to create a query to answer a question like - "Which objects from our collection traveled to Europe in 2001?" or "Which objects have been on exhibition somewhere in the United States in the past 5 years". (we loan so much stuff, in such large quantities, all over the world...that it will become necessary at some point, to be able to answer these questions, for a variety of reasons...) In order to harvest data to answer these questions - would the Loans module be the best place to query this data? Or, the Locations module? Is it redundant in any way to have the information in both places? What advantage would it be to have the information in one over the other? Thanks for any/all answers... Allison .................................................................. .................................................................. the warhol: Allison A. Smith Collection Manager / Database Administrator 117 Sandusky Street Pittsburgh, PA 15212 T 412.237.8345 F 412.237.8340 E [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> W www.warhol.org <http://www.warhol.org> W www.warholstore.com <http://www.warholstore.com> The Andy Warhol Museum One of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh .................................................................. .................................................................. -----Original Message----- From: Mary Ellen Guerra [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 4:54 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Objects out on loan Hi Dave, At the Smithsonian American Art Museum the Location Authority has values for Tour and Loan. The specific places are entered in Remarks. It is useful for the Registrar to be able to see where it is on the location card and the remarks field being free text doesn't require a new sub-location for every conceivable place an object might go to. Mary Ellen Guerra Collection Database Administrator Smithsonian American Art Museum >>> [log in to unmask] 03/20/03 02:32PM >>> Hi all, I was curious as to how everyone is handling locations for objects which are currently out on loan. We have 7 objects out on loan to LACMA right now and when an object goes out we update its current location to "On Loan" and that is a site in the loc hierarchy. Most of our users can't see location because its a security controlled field available only to registrars, curators and conservation. So we have a Status Flag that indicates that the object is out. Is anyone doing anything differently? I was considering adding sub sites to the "On Loan" site that indicate the actual location of the object in the location authority. For example On Loan The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LA and so on. Dave