Some days ago Steve Ringle asked about 'ex-post-facto' accession
    numbers.
          Maybe better ideas than mine have turned up in the interim, but
    for what it's worth:
          We had many many items that had either never been numbered or
    whose numbers had fallen off (someone thought scotch tape was just the
    thing [shudder].  Anyway, to get these things into our catalog system
    and for retrieval purposes (and eventually, hopefully, to create
    computer search/matches with 'missing' items) we decided to add the
    numeral 8 in front of the DATE section of our accession numbers, on the
    theory that by the year 2800 these items will no longer be in existence
    or some other method will be in use.
          Thus, if a regular 1995 accession is 995-3-7, then an artifact
    found in the museum without a number in 1995 would be 895-1-1, etc.  If
    a donors name can be associated, but the item was never numbered when
    it came in, we use the 8 with the year we have record that it arrived
    at the museum. (so 853-1-1 for something with documented arrival in
    1953).
          This way you don't have to go back and open up old books, and you
    can keep a seperate book, ongoing, for the "800 numbers".
          I expect any similar scheme would work....but I would exhort you
    not to use the 'x' thing, because it will create difficulties in a
    computer database in which the numbers will need to be entirely numeric
    for sorting purposes.
          Good luck, Steve......Lucy Skjelstad
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