I don't write our main reports, and we have many different kinds that both display and sort by artist, so I could be wrong......but I think they're set up so that, if the display order 1 constituent equals the ID for "artist/maker unknown," then display culture. I'll double check with our report export Thor when he's back. ______________________ Jessica Milby TMS Systems Manager Philadelphia Museum of Art Phone: 215-684-7283 Fax: 215-235-0035 [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Aylsworth, David Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 10:03 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: 'Unknown' Constituent Records Jessica, How do you deal with reports for groups of objects that are by both "known" and "unknown" artists? I wanted us to go towards an approach like you describe, but we realized that the departments that had almost all "unknown" artists (Pre-Columbian, Antiquities, Decorative Arts, etc.) would use the "culture" as the artist in their wall label copy, while departments who have "known" artists generally do not. I wanted EVERY object to have the Culture field populated (we made the decision that "culture" had to equal the nationality of the artist) for searching capabilities, but writing a report that would grab the culture field when the artist was unknown, and the constituent display name when they were not stressed me out too much. Increasingly, we're having curators who are assembling exhibitions cross-departmentally, so the need for a consistent report that would treat ALL objects equally, and be as close as possible to what they would put on the wall labels is absolutely necessary. Philadelphia has the same sort of collection as ours, so I'm curious if that issue has come up for you and how you've handled it. Thanks, David David Aylsworth Collections Registar Museum of Fine Arts, Houston tel: 713-639-7824 fax: 713-639-7780 -----Original Message----- From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Milby, Jessica Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 8:52 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: 'Unknown' Constituent Records Forgot to add that we require every object with "artist/maker unknown" to have a Culture. -----Original Message----- From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Milby, Jessica Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 9:49 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: 'Unknown' Constituent Records We use one constituent called "artist/maker unknown" for everything by an unknown maker and add our regional information to the object Geography. We use Geography Types like "probably made in" and "assembled in" etc. to describe our certainty or otherwise for the place made but still allow for consistent searching based on location. This method arose from the need to display the geography in a semi-narrative format that satisfies the curators but still allows for logical searches. --Jessica ______________________ Jessica Milby TMS Systems Manager Philadelphia Museum of Art Phone: 215-684-7283 Fax: 215-235-0035 [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Diane Lee Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 9:17 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: 'Unknown' Constituent Records I don't know if this will help with your situation or not as your system is probably already well established, but thought I'd share anyway. We actually have 'Unknown' as a constituent, and we link that to artist/maker etc. For the place name, we don't use the geography assistant, we use the Thesaurus feature and use Geography xrefs and have Types such as 'Place of origin' where we link the place name. If there is a possible or probable with it, we can add it to the remarks field. So if we don't know who did it, but know it's probably from Hartford, Connecticut, we'll do Maker=Unknown constituent, and GeoXrefs=Place of origin Hartford\Hartford County\Connecticut etc., and in remarks add 'Probably made in Hartford'. Hope that helps a little bit. Diane ======================================== Diane Lee, Collections Manager Ÿ 860-236-5621 x242 Connecticut Historical Society -----Original Message----- From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stephanie Hansen Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 6:26 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: 'Unknown' Constituent Records Dear TMS list-serv, I'm hoping we can pick up on this old topic again to help me make a decision on how which field(s) to use for our decorative arts/sculpture "unknown" constituents. We wouldn't normally display "unknown" for dec arts-but rather "Costal New England, probably Salem, Massachusetts, or Portsmouth, New Hampshire" for example. Does anyone else list a place instead of an "unknown" constituent like this? The problem is-that most of them are more than 48 charaters (prefix/suffix/culture) and most of them have qualifiers like "possibly", "probably", "or", etc.-so they don't work in the geography fields either. I'm also afraid it will get too "out of sight/out of mind" in text entries or a udf. Do any of you have constituents that refer to a place-or has anyone come up with a good solution to listings such as the above? Many thanks for any advice!! Stephanie Hansen Milwaukee Art Museum