Hi Eddy —

Generally speaking, we have a value of 0 as the End Date for living artists. Where this causes us trouble is when you do not have a death date for artists known to be dead. In the date label you can clarify this with something like ‘active 1789-1803’ or ‘ca. 1450’ but we would shy away from putting 1803 or 1450 in the End Date field. Over time by including non-death dates in this field we will no longer be able to make assumptions about copyright based on the value of End Date.

Of course active dates could be entered in the ‘Historical dates’ table but that still leaves the question of what type of value is entered into End Date for artists with unknown death dates.

Cheers,
Scott


From: Eddy Almonte <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Reply-To: "The Museum System (TMS) Users" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Date: Tuesday, August 5, 2014 at 5:50 PM
To: "[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Subject: Artist Begin and End search dates

Hey everyone,

I’m wondering how everyone uses artist’s birth and death dates in the Constituents module. In our TMS, we use the Begin and End Search Date fields. If an artist is still active and alive, we just fill the Begin Search Date with the year they were born and TMS automatically fills the End Search Date with that same year. If we know the time of death, then we fill the End Search Date field with that year. For example, if an artist was born in 1979 and is still alive, both the Begin and End Search Date fields will have 1979 filled in.

This hasn’t been a problem until I’ve recently tried to query all active artists in our collection who are still alive. This wouldn’t be an issue if the End Search Date field were blank or ‘0’, for example. Should that field be blank since the beginning? Would doing an advanced search of Objects-related constituents with End Search date equal to ‘0’ would have solved my query problem (if all End Search Dates were zero for alive artists)? I would love to hear how other institutions are using these fields.

Thanks in advance!!
Eddy

Eddy Almonte
Assistant Registrar
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
2 East 78th Street
NYC 10075
T 646.448.8324<tel:212.717.6080>
www.coleccioncisneros.org<http://www.coleccioncisneros.org/>
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