8 Nov
2004
8 Nov
'04
5:31 a.m.
On Mon, 2004-11-08 at 10:57 -0800, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
On Mon, 8 Nov 2004, Jules Richardson wrote:
Yep, that does seem the sensible way to go. And as Alex said, the parent
record can hold details of where an item came from (I want to capture
where stuff goes to as well - we'll dispose of surplus items to good
homes every so often and that'd be a useful thing to know so that
related stuff that may turn up can be passed on too)
What I'm puzzling over is how to record any
relationship between
hardware / software / documentation, or even to what extent any
relationship needs to be recorded. Thoughts on this would be most
appreciated, and I wonder what other museums do...
Many museums simply give one accession number to an entire lot that gets
donated. So if a computer comes in with it's monitor, disk drives,
software and manuals, that's given one accession number and one database
entry.
Me personally, I started documenting every last bit of hardware, software
and documentation I had, and giving each it's own record. I would then
link them to a "parent" record by way of a simple pointer to the other
record, and vice versa. It depends on how detailed you want to get. I'm
an info spaz
Me too - I just want to make sure it doesn't take someone else hours to
enter new data as and when things are donated, as I won't be the only
one filling in entries :) Personally I'd rather have more information
and never need it than not enough, though.
Taking a wild guess I'd estimate that we have in the order of a thousand
systems though, so that's one hell of a backlog to catch up on! That's
without all the boards, software, docs etc. that need looking through
even.
Given that, a phased approach is probably needed where only the minimum
of data needs entering initially, with a seperate process to flag
incomplete records for future completion.
Let's say I have a boxed Commodore 64. I would
enter that as a Commodore
64 and then include either in the notes or in a special database field
whether the item includes it's original packaging. Power supplies and
such I would not give separate entries unless warranted (like, say, the
power distribution cabinet of an IBM mainframe).
That'd be my preference too. My only worry is situations like finding an
oddball lead sitting around and having no idea what machine it's for -
which means it can't be put away with its machine, which in turn means
it sits around for years or worse still gets chucked as being useless.
(In reality I'd end up posting a photo here if I didn't know what it
was, and I wouldn't leave it on the side in the first place - but not
all people are me :-)
cheers,
Jules