Mr. Baron's answer seems to be tongue in cheek, but the idea is sound. I
have seen many a media collection (such as photo archives) catalog go down
the wrong road by trying to file the physical artifact by theme or subject
matter. It soon becomes a problem--is this a photograph of an event? a
building? a person? a region? Later, researchers do not know where to find
specific photos because they are physically filed by an arbitrary system.
Number the objects sequentially and let your computer database deal with
keywords, cross-referencing, and categorization. Really, it's that simple.

Wade Lawrence
Asst. Director
Drayton Hall
A Historic Site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation

Robert A. Baron wrote:

> At 04:34 PM 4/1/98 -0500, Judy & Alan wrote:
>
> >I have created a database for our media collection at Carillon
> >Historical Park.  Since the items contained within the collection are
> >unaccessioned items, they have no numbers.  Do any of the list members
> >have ideas regarding the numbering of a media collection?  Have any of
> >you ever established a parallel numbering system?  Thanks in advance for
> >any help you might lend.
>
> Start with the number 1 and keep on going until you run out of things or
> run out of numbers, whichever comes first.
>
> r.baron