Hi
everyone,
The Harvard University Art Museums has been doing a major inventory of
all of its art objects. Each object has been barcoded using Code 39
encoding as well as our containers and locations. This was done so
that one day we could use an inventory tracking program. That day
has come and we have been struggling to find a system that can do what
we
need it to. We've found that the TMS Barcode Plugin will not
satisfy these conditions for several reasons, a few of which are listed
below:
1. It works with only 9.2 and we currently have 9.3 (upgrading to
9.35 very soon).
2. The plugin does not have the capability to be upgraded to later
versions of TMS and Gallery Systems doesn't have this listed as a
project
that they plan to work on anytime soon.
3. The plugin generates its own unique identifiers - since we have
about 200,000 objects already barcoded, it would not be practical to go
back and relabel everything again.
Is anyone using a system, other than the TMS Barcode Plugin, that does
some sort of inventory tracking but utilizes the TMS database, not a
database of its own? We understand that it may be necessary to
introduce extra tables but do not want to map everything in the TMS
database over to a new database as this would defeat the purpose of our
recent conversion to TMS. So basically, we are looking for an
application that could be linked to the TMS database so that the
following steps can be followed:
1. Scan an object or crate barcode.
2. Scan a location.
3. The objects or all objects in the crates will be moved, in TMS,
to the scanned location.
This is the gist of what we need. We would like to see if there is
already a system in place that does this rather than dedicate our
resources to reinventing the wheel.
Thanks in advance for your ideas/comments!
--
Valdeva Crema
Application Developer and Support Specialist
Digital Information and Technology
Harvard University Art Museums
32 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
617.384.9389