At 04:56 PM 30/5/97 -0400, you wrote, in part:

>Most (in fact, I think all) of the museums I've worked in have also used
>only the last 2 digits of a year when accessioning (as in 97.1.1).   If most
>museums have entered their accession/catalog numbers into their
>computer systems as simply 97.1, what happens in the year 2000?  How
>does one get the database to recognize that 01.1 is a later accession
>than 99.1 and sort it appropriately?

For once (and possibly the only time), I'm slightly ahead of the curve.
Natural history has a long tradition of using full years (and avoiding like
the plague such obscenities as "11/10/85" for dates); our databases use full
years.

> Are there programs out there that do take care of this
>problem (such as pre-formatted museum software like Snap, etc.), or will
>we all have to add "19" in front of the "99', and "20" to our "01"?

>Christine Mouw

My personal preference would be to go ahead and add the prefix--at the cost
of some disk space and a little time, you've made it entirely clear for
"eternity" what century is involved and at the same time avoid being the
captive of a software fix.  Most decent databases can add a "19" in front of
your old numbers with a minimum of fuss--it's not necessary to go through
and enter each by hand.

Art Harris


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