I was in your position about ten years ago.  It's complicated because you
are dealing with both museum and archival collections that have different
documentation needs.  Briefly, I can answer some of your questions.

Most museums use a tripartite system of numbering.  That is, each discreet
gift is given a single accession number (in your system 9988).  And then the
various parts within it are given an extenstion.  For instance, in your
example, the newspaper clippings, photographs and uniforms would be numbered
9988.1, 9988.2, 9988.3, and 9988.4 respectively.  Since all of the various
parts of the uniform can be interpreted separately, you would then number
the jacket 9988.4.1, the pants 9988.4.2, the hat 9988.4.3. and so on.

I was able to take a Museum Registration workshop which gave me the nuts and
bolts of how to register museum objects.  The best single printed source
that I know of is *The New Museum Registration Methods* now edited by
Rebecca Buck and Jean Allman Gilmore.  There are previous editions called
*Museum Registration Methods* by Dorothy Dudley and Irma Wilkinson.  Each
edition had new articles in it, so all are worth looking into.

It is worth putting a bit of thought into how you approach your
accessioning.  I hope you can reconcile past practice into a system that
makes sense for you.

Mary Beth Corrigan

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