Hi Cathryn,

We’ve actually been discussing this a lot here in Houston lately.  We’ve always had various title types “Title”, “Alternate Title”, “For Descriptive Use Only”, “From”, etc.  We also make use of the display function, and only have the titles display that are the ones that would be shown on a wall label or catalogue entry.  Our Photography Department likes having “Descriptive Use Only” as a type that does not display as many photographs are technically untitled, but common usage has ascribed a title to them based on the description.

The Photography Department has also been doing a lot of research on photographs in the collection, and document in TMS the various titles that a particular image has been published as.  We enter each of these with a title type of “Title”, and make a remark about where the title came from (either from a published source, written on the back of the image, or given orally by the photographer).  The Curator then decides based on all of this which title should be our preferred title.  The preferred title is called that in the remarks, and is marked as the only one to display.

We use the title type of “From” to separate the titles from the series or portfolio titles, and try to be consistent with how we enter the series titles to include the phrase “from the series” before the actual title.  Reports then, of course, sometimes include the title type “Title” AND the title type “From”, and have to always acknowledge which title is to display.

David

David Aylsworth

Collections Registar

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

tel:  713-639-7824

fax: 713-639-7780

Presenting North Looks South: Building the Latin American Art Collection

on view June 7 – September 27, 2009

From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cathryn Goodwin
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 4:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Photography Titles

I’d be interested in how others manage “descriptive” titles vs. artists’ titles for photographs in the collection.  Both stylistically and in terms of recording the type – is ‘descriptive’ a title type in your TMS installation?

Thanks

cathryn