Greetings
In our system, the Title field was renamed/reconfigured
to hold philatelic catalog info. Therefore, the Object Name field is the only
place for object titles, etc. Furthermore, this field pulls over to our online
catalog, Arago www.arago.si.edu and so
has to be somewhat consistent yet descriptive enough for the public.
In general, we use Subject + object type. We use initial
caps for the entire subject name, followed by lowercase object type.
Ex: Rural Free Delivery wagon model
Ex: Railway Post Office mail sack label
Ex: World
War II Patriotic post card
For stamps, we include the denomination
and format. value + Subject
+ format
Ex: 1c
Ex: 6c James
Garfield block of eight
One thing that is regrettable about how
our object names function for stamps is that no one thought to put the actual
word postage stamp in the Object Name when describing stamps. When our data
went live to the web, the public was unable to search for the words ‘postage
stamp’ and get hits of all our stamps. We’ve devised some work
arounds but I would urge you to think ahead of the data—how will it be
used in the future?
Kate Diggle
Database Administrator
National Postal Museum
From: The Museum
System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chad Petrovay
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 11:24
AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Object Name
Does anyone have a style guide for Object Name that they can
share?
Collections Database Administrator
The
P: 410.547.9000 x266
F: 410.837.4846
Exhibitions:
Mapping the Cosmos:
Images from the Hubble Space Telescope through
July 27
Faces of Ancient Arabia: The Giraud and Carolyn Foster
Collection of South Arabian Art on view July 20–September 7