Dan, welcome to the club!

Almost every old collection I've worked with has this problem, and it takes
care to reach a decision, and then consistency over time to keep the items
connected with their original records.

I have some suggestions:

1. Make good use of PastPerfect's "Old Number" field.

2. Do use the original number to retain critical identity. I would
definitely avoid a prefix (unless there is a different accession number that
could be used).  But definitely consider a suffix to achieve a unique
number. It preferably would be numerical with decimal, hyphen or whatever
-just stay consistent. Alpha has the problem of many numerals written with
less than draftsman quality handwriting look too much like numbers which
just adds confusion. (Alpha is usually used for parts of a set.) When you
search for an item by number, search "all catalogs" using the original
(duplicated) number --that will bring up all items with that number
embedded, but it won't be very many and you'll easily find the one you're
looking for.

Where this often gets sticky, however, is when several items that are not a
'set' have been catalogued as a group with the same number.  Then you
probably have to go to a third number.

3. Don't be afraid to start a new numbering system such as the standard
trinomials for new acquisitions. It isn't difficult to explain that any
sequential number up to ___ (in our case over 5000) is a number prior to
such-and-such a date. The difficulty with continuing  sequential numbers is
that as soon as you go over 4 digits, it gets increasingly easy for people
either writing or reading the number to transpose digits, leading to some
*real* messes and a lot of very frustrating time spent trying to guess the
real number. (The voice of experience, believe me, at a former museum where
numbers were into five digits.)

Finally, if the items have a separate (different) accession number,
incorporating that in the object id number might provide the way to create a
unique id number.  If not, however, you'll have to plan how to deal with
that (which we're in the midst of doing and it's another conversation).

Lucy Sperlin
Butte County Historical Society
Oroville, CA

-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Dan Grzesiak
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 2:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] Overlapping Numbering Systems

Thanks for the reply, Brian. You are correct -- I misspoke about the
Objectid across the catalogs. I've been thinking about placeholders, and
didn't make that clear. I'm very much trying to avoid using prefixes, but it
is an idea that's been batted around.

Dan Grzesiak
Curator, Santa Fe Trail Center
Larned, KS

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