Agreed, using TGN's a good approach as its range of equivalent terms is broad; it's free with TMS; TMS incorporates very functionality to allow easy querying of equivalent terms - and there's not much point re-inventing the wheel (and it's a big wheel...). One issue we have, however, encountered at Tate is disagreement about TGN's choice of 'preferred' terms. Beyond that, maybe go for the current name of a geographical area etc as preferred term, with others (historical) as equivalents? You might want to take a different approach with terms for 'culture' to take account of the extent to which e.g. 'Iranian' really is equivaent to 'Persian' - thinking there might be a conflation here of 'geography' and 'culture' that's too straightforward? Guess the key is consistency and ability to get intended results back (by the public or internally, within museum/gallery etc) On a related theme, does anybody have any experience of using the Union List of Artist Names with TMS. For example, using to record 'nationality' and 'events'. Does anybody have a licensed copy? Woud it be useful to incorporate into TMS (maybe an issue because it's a compiled resource?) Jon Tate -----Original Message----- From: Jeri Moxley [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: 12 January 2005 15:47 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Iran vs Persia Hi Jenny, For search-ability, I'd recommend using the TGN if you've got it, or creating local thesaurus terms for geographical regions and culture names. That way, you can retrieve the records regardless of which term users choose for their search. Curatorial staff would need to conference on what they want to be the 'public' name used in label copy. I've seen some TMS databases with culture and geography entered in the Culture field and the Geography Assistant for 'public' purposes, and again as thesaurus terms for 'scientific' or research purposes - where the thesaurus terms are nested in appropriate hierarchy and have all the necessary alternate spellings, historical names, etc. as equivalent terms. I've also seen this done with object names for certain types of collections. Best, Jeri **** Jeri L. Moxley TMS Specialist Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (212) 423-3509 -----Original Message----- From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Wilker, Jenny Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 3:25 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Iran vs Persia We have this geographical region in our database in many ways. [Our data came from many sources; this is still cleanup time.) What do you do? We have in the Culture field: Iranian (Persian) Persian (Iranian) Persian Iranian In the Geography field we have Iran Persia Iran (Persia) Persia (Iran) We have mostly rugs, arms and armor, paintings, and ceramics from this geographical area. This, of course, is just one example of the problem of the historical version the modern day name for a place. Thanks, Jenny Avanti! Jenny Wilker, Ph.D. Collection Management System Information Services Philadelphia Museum of Art