Good morning all,
I was wondering if any of you might have some suggestions for dealing with a persistent issue in our cataloguing – namely, how to deal with items for which there is uncertain or ambiguous geography.
I was recently brought on here at SLAM to re-evaluate our cataloguing practices, and this struck me as an immediate problem. Thus far our curators have largely dealt with the issue by writing things like ‘probably Pakistan’ or something similar in the
Country field of the Geography Assistant. And in cases where there could be two or more possibilities, I have found entries such as ‘Syria, India, or Pakistan’.
This obviously makes our data extremely messy, but also creates problems when we are trying to pull from the Geography Assistant for label text, etc. Have any of you come up with an elegant solutions
to this problem? I would be grateful for any suggestions you could offer!
Thanks very much,
Sarah
Sarah J Biggs |
Collections Cataloguer
Saint Louis Art Museum
1 Fine Arts Drive
St Louis, Missouri
63110
314.655.5374