Our collection is broad in nature with Asian, African, Native American, etc., as well as painting and sculpture. We have constituents for named artists, manufacturers, culture groups, and geographic locations, in keeping with the way each curator would want information listed on label copy. This use of constituents also helps with historical geographic and culture groups that do not conform to current political borders (such as Gandhara). We do not use "unknown"; we include whatever regional or cultural information is available for any given object. We do not use consituents for time periods because that is more appropriately placed in the date field. We use the date display field to include period dates so that we can search on the term (Meiji) or the actual date range. An example is "Meiji period (1868-1912), late 19th century" (search dates would be 1875-1899). Suzanne Stephens Database Administrator Birmingham Museum of Art -----Original Message----- From: Cathryn Goodwin [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 7:54 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Authority control for culture / period terms Does anyone use the constituents module to manage attribution of works of art with not named artist? For instance, creating a PERIOD role and records for Meiji, Edo,Hellenistic, etc? Or a CULTURE role to handle Greek, Attic; Maya; Olmec, etc? I'm leaning heavily in this direction and would like to hear if anyone has experience / opinions one way or the other. thanks Cathryn Goodwin Princeton University Art Museum