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 ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).