Hi Angela,

We had many of the same concerns as you about duplicating cataloguing work and the possibility of inaccurate data persisting, so during the migration we did not populate the exhibition object fields and I’ve subsequently blocked the fields from view for all users.  As we add objects to new exhibitions, the fields do get populated (except for the Attribution field because we are not using the “Attribution” feature in the objects module) but no one sees it. We are open to the idea of using the fields in the future for saving accurate exhibition specific label copy info, but are letting the dust settle post-migration first.  One consequence of not populating the fields is that the TMS2010 object lists and data views in the Exhibitions record had to be altered to pull data from the objects module instead of from the exhibitions objects information.

I think the deleting/re-adding records is an interesting idea, but it would mean losing other exhibition planning information you have in other fields (catalogue number, section, case number, etc.). You would also need to keep track of which objects were included/excluded from each venue, which could be daunting.  

Wouldn’t it be great to just have a “repopulate information from the objects module” button?

Thanks

Alexis Lenk

TMS Administrator

617-384-6762

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Harvard Art Museums

32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

www.harvardartmuseums.org

Hi all-

We’ve just converted to TMS 2010, and are having an issue with the new exhibition object fields in the Exhibitions module.  Many of our objects in our upcoming exhibitions are loan objects with little object information already in TMS.  We want to make sure that the exhibition object info and the object record info match, but don’t like the idea of having to do duplicate data entry in both places when things change.  I also don’t want our users to think they’ve updated the object record when doing data entry in the exhibitions module and not realize it doesn’t link back to the objects module.  I’m curious as to how others are handling this?  Right now we are planning on making the exhibition fields view-only to most users, and then deleting and re-adding object records at various points so that the exhibition records also get updated without having to update things twice. 

Many thanks for any suggestions!

Angie

Angela Steinmetz, Head Registrar

Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

5550 S. Greenwood Ave.

Chicago, IL 60637

T 773-702-0175

F 773-702-3121

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