At 04:49 PM 2/28/97 -0600, MCS wrote:

>Has anyone tackled the accessioning dilemma that crops up when a fragment
>is accessioned individually from the larger piece it came from?
>
>We have a Hellenistic statue of a girl with one accession number and the
>bird that broke off her arm was accessioned as a lone fragment.  NOW the
>two have been reunited again.
>
>Does anyone have any ideas of how to accurately catalog the object still
>maintaining the clarity of records in a database?
>
>MCS

Let's assume that each part, now united, has its own provenance, accession
data, exhibit history and conservation history.  For these reasons you
certainly don't want to merge these items into a single accession.  Of
course you will not consider changing their accession numbers.

Almost every modern collection management and cataloging application will
allow registrars to define objects that have part/whole relationships.
Such records can take the form of a master record describing a group in
which the parts are individually accessioned into the collection, or even
in another collection somewhere else.

One answer to your question would be to suggest that you create a record
that signifies the entire object and link the parts to it -- using your
native part/whole function.

Another way would be to create a group number and assign the same group
number to each of the parts.  For simple databases you can create "logical,
non-physical" records that define items that are otherwise accessioned
separately.  If you have a simple database, this may be the easiest route
to follow.



===========================
Robert A. Baron
Museum Computer Consultant
P.O. Box 93
Larchmont, NY 10538 (USA)
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