C,

I would continue with your current sysem (2000.0.0) and leave all the
previous numbers alone. It seems to me that the primary concern is that the
numbers on objects remain both unique and associated with a particular
object or group of objects. Since the year can only go up, and 2000 is
greater than 942, 42 and 0, you won't have to worry about duplicate
numbers.

Actually, the only problem I notice (other than numerical consistency,
which is just an irritation, really) is that a list sorted by accession
number will not be in proper time order, e.g., sorted in ascending order,
43 will appear in a list before 1941. This can probably be easily fixed by
an amateur programmer, three or four lines of code and an extra "accession
year" field in your database.

Does that help? Good luck!

======================================
Andrew Schuricht
Consultant, Las Vegas Springs Preserve Project

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