I've worked for two different museums that have similar Past Perfect issues as you described--with catalogue numbers not entered in a uniform style. One institution is still going through the process of correcting older catalogue numbers to include the entire year, as many were entered with only the last two digits. It is very time consuming, but in my opinion, very much worth it. In my experience, Past Perfect's search functions are not very forgiving, so looking for a record with the search term "1981.1.1" will never find you 81.01.001, or vice versa. Knowing the different ways numbers have been entered is somewhat helpful, as you can do multiple searches in the various formats, but I've found it incredibly frustrating--especially when training new users. For the sake of easier searching, I would recommend going through the process of making the records a uniform format. It will save many headaches in the long run. 

As for your deaccession question, I haven't worked with this directory as much, so I don't have a lot of advice, but one thought I had was flagging the deaccessioned records by adding a "DE" to the beginning of the catalogue number as well as changing their status. (If you decide to pull the records back.) This will bunch all of the deaccessioned records together without removing them from their current directories, and also let people know right away that the object has been deaccessioned without having to see the record's status. 

Good luck with your data!

-Krista    

On Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 11:56 AM, Michael Rebman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I am the manager of my institution’s collections database, and the primary user.  I have two questions for the collective wisdom related to ease of use:

 

My institution has a fairly small collection, and it is split almost evenly between objects, photographs, and archival groupings.  Object numbers started in 1961, and are numbered as [year].[number of the accession for that year].[number within that accession] for all objects and photographs.  However, prior to 2000 almost all catalog years are two digits, with a few exceptions; almost all accession and catalog numbers do not have preceding zeroes.  This makes the report maker difficult to use, as records are never listed in order and they become a headache when exported to excel.  Renumbering the PastPerfect catalog entries to have a full year and easy-to-sort accession numbers (for example, 64.1.1 to 1964.001.001) would be time-consuming, but would it be worth it?

 

Another question I have is related to the Deaccession screen. For those that do not use PastPerfect, when the deaccession button is pressed on an individual object’s catalog record, the record is deleted, and a placeholder is put into a different part of the database.  The deaccession screen is difficult to search, and disrupts catalog searches.  Personally, I prefer to flag a record’s status to “Deaccessioned” instead of using the deaccession button, but a person who worked before me did a mass deaccession button clicking.  There are no existing backups of the database prior to that event.  Some of the records are duplicates (including at least two 64.1.1 records, although I do not know how that happened).  Should I bring these object records back to the main database, and simply flag them as deaccessioned?

 

Michael R.

 

---

To unsubscribe from the MUSEUM-L list, click the following link:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-HOME.exe?SUBED1=MUSEUM-L&A=1