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
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[log in to unmask] 06/05/03 03:27PM
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Hello everyone.
It is a little weird to be
communicating with you as a TMS user rather
than an employee of GS. Not that
serving you wasn't a constant joy, but
I must admit that using TMS every day
for the Diebenkorn Catalogue
Raisonné is even more fun. We are doing
the catalogue in association
with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and
the UC Press. Many of
you will be hearing from us soon to confirm the
data about your
Diebenkorns for inclusion in the Catalogue.
There is an issue that we have come upon as we move data from the
legacy
Exhibition and Bibliography text fields. We created our TMS
database in
1996, and the exhibition and bibliography data in the legacy
database
was converted into the object module text fields.
As we
have gone through and moved the data to the Exhibition and
Bibliography
modules we have been trying to figure out a consistent way
to hook exhibition
catalogues to their associated exhibitions. Through
the links from an
object to both the exhibition record and the
bibliography record for the
catalogue we can, of course, deduce that a
certain catalogue is associated
with a certain exhibition, but we
haven't been able to come up with a direct
link. The Catalogue Number
in the Exhibition record is just a text
field, so that doesn't provide
any level of control.
This is going to
matter when we go to publish the Catalogue Raisonné,
because the format we
are using calls for the catalogue to be identified
and listed with each
exhibition. We can put the catalogue data in a
text field of the
Exhibition record, but that is rather inelegant as it
denormalizes the
data. We could also cook up our own cross-reference
numbers, but we
were hoping that the librarians among you might
enlighten us about the
"right" way to do this.
Dick
Richard Grant
The
Richard Diebenkorn Catalogue Raisonné Project
3200 College Avenue
#2
Berkeley, CA 94705
510-428-1400
PLEASE NOTE MY NEW EMAIL
ADDRESS:
[log in to unmask]-----Original Message-----
From:
The Museum System (TMS) Users [
mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Jonathan Thristan
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 9:37 AM
To:
[log in to unmask]Subject: Re: Exhibition
history
Hello!
At Tate we attach Objects to Exhibition records
(directly if Tate
collection works or via Loan records if Object records for
short term
loans-in to Displays/Exhibitions), as GS suggest, and run reports
etc to
retrieve information on Exhibition history. We record the status
of
Objects relative to an Exhibition (agreed, declined, provisional etc)
on
the Objects tab of the Exhibition record. We don't currently use
the
Bibliography module. Secondly, our issue, we wondered whether
anybody
has encountered any problems with Object, Exhibition or Loan
records
where a Work is borrowed more than once, into different Exhibitions,
but
using the same Object record each time (whether problems resulting
from
the way TMS functions or from procedures).
EGs
if
an Object changes hands between the first time it was borrowed and a
second
time, then although the correct history of an Object can be
viewed via the
Related function, because we display Acquisition related
constituents on
Object records, this information doesn't display
correctly to reflect both
the present loan and the previous one (I guess
we could simply stop recording
Acquisition related Constituent Xref
details for short term loans
in...).
If data about an object changes over time i.e. it's re-attributed
or its
title is amended, it may be difficult to identify an object that
is
currently being considered for loan-in as the same as an Object
for
which we already have an Object record. A duplicate object record
is
created and the ability to construct a complete exhibition history
for
that object becomes
problematic.
Regards
Jon
Tate
-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Nacke [
mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 04 June 2003 17:00
To:
[log in to unmask]Subject:
Exhibition history
Hello,
I have a question about how others may
be documenting exhibition history
and bibliographic data using TMS. It
appears there are two ways to enter
this information and here at SAM both
ways have been used in the past.
Here's the issue: In the
Documentation tab of the Object record, there
is a text field called
"Exhibition History". Here past exhibitions are
cited for that
object. Then in the Related tab of the Object record,
Exhibitions that
were entered in the Exhibition module are listed. These
two fields are not
combined. Therefore, one must look in both places if
one wants a complete
picture of the exhibition history. Ditto
for
Bibliography.
Gallery Systems
says:
1. Exhibition
history
Note: this is not an active field; any relevant
information should be entered
in the "exhibitions module." Any
information contained in the field is
"legacy data" and must be entered
into its correct
field.
This information can be accessed by selecting
"Exhibitions" from the
"Related" pull-down at the very top of the
computer's monitor. Additionally,
This information can be exacted
through the object worksheet and other
specialized
reports.
It Says basically the same thing for
Bibliography data. I am curious to know
how others are using these
fields to create accessible data for the
exhibition history of an object
in the collection.
Scott
Nacke
Assistant Registrar/Image Rights Manager
Seattle Art Museum
100
University Street
PO Box 22000
Seattle, Washington
98122-9700
206.654.3130 Direct
206.654.3135
Fax
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