Dear Caroline, The National Gallery (London) uses a convention that we established in our published Complete Illustrated Catalogue. In TMS we create Constituent Records that represent school or place of origin. The format is adjectival where possible and usually 'general to specific' in order. Place names may be country, region or town. We do not make a separate Constituent record for each unique anonymous artist; instead we link all anonymous objects of, for example, Italian Venetian school to the 'Italian, Venetian' record. We do not record any date information in the Constituent Record; we only record the date or approximate date of making in the Object Record. We do have one Constituent Record called 'Unknown', but it should only be used if we do not yet have enough information about the object to assign it to the right record. In other words it is usually used procedurally, e.g. when a new loan-in first arrives. On display labels the editor edits the rather terse TMS name to read more elegantly e.g. 'British' becomes 'Unknown British artist' Here are some examples from the Display Name field of the Constituent Record in TMS British Deft French, Fontainebleau School Italian, North Italian, Roman Italian, Tuscan Italian, Venetian Netherlandish Portuguese Swabian For doubtful cases we make a separate record, e.g. French or North Italian French (?) For anonymous hands that have acquired an unique identity in the literature, we create a unique record as for any other artist. Master of Liesborn Master of Cappenberg (Jan Baegert?) I hope this is useful; please do contact me with any queries. Gillian Essam Collection Information Manager The National Gallery Trafalgar Square London WC2N 5DN tel: 020 7747 2543 fax: 020 7747 2472 email: [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: Delahunty, Caroline [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: 09 August 2005 16:53 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: 'Unknown' Constituent Records Dear All Just wondering if any of you are able to advise on how best to deal with 'unknown' artists in terms of constituent records. At the moment we only have one constituent record called 'Unknown' with over 1300 works linked to this record. In our legacy data many of these unknowns did actually have a date e.g. Unknown, 17th century. Unfortunately this was not addressed at the time of the migration and these dates are not on TMS. I think one way to address this would be to have different 'Unknown' constituents for each century e.g. Unknown, 17th century; Unknown 18th century; and a general unknown where we don't have a date. What are your thoughts on this? What would be another way to deal with this? However, we do have some works with the artist 'unknown' but with a more specific date e.g. Unknown, c1630. We can't have tens of 'unknown' constituents for every single given date. For some records I could put the date of the 'unknown' as the date of the work but this would not always be appropriate e.g. in the case of prints etc. Unless it was entered as a historical date? Any suggestions would be gratefully received. Many thanks Caroline Delahunty TMS Officer National Gallery of Ireland Merrion Square West Dublin 2 tel: 01 632 5525 ********************************************************************** The information contained in this email and in any attachments is confidential and is intended solely for the use and attention of the intended recipient(s). This information may be subject to legal & professional privilege. If you are not an intended recipient of this email, you must not use, disclose, copy, distribute or retain this message or any part of it. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete all copies of this email from your computer system(s). This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. National Gallery of Ireland Merrion Square West Dublin 2 Ireland Tel: 353-1-661 5133 Fax: 353-1-661 5372 http://www.nationalgallery.ie ********************************************************************** -------------------- Stubbs and the Horse 29 June 2005 - 25 September 2005 Book Now: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/stubbs/default.htm Sign up for the latest news, offers and exclusive competitions from the National Gallery by clicking on this link http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/what/news/subscribe.htm