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• Location and Inventory Functions

Vernon Cataloguing

Location and Inventory Functions

ABOVE: Vernon′s Location Data Entry Window

Vernon has a comprehensive and sophisticated facility for dealing with location and inventory control, with the ability to record four distinct aspects of location for each object. These are Current Location, Usual Location, Last Confirmed Location (i.e. Inventory Location) and Location History.

To ensure that a detailed location history is maintained at all times, location changes are not entered directly in these fields. Instead the user performs a Movement Transaction, entering details such as the Date, Time, Reference, Authoriser, Mover, Notes, and, for each part moved, the Part, its Location Reason (e.g. Permanent Exhibition, Loan, etc) and the new Location the object is being moved to.

As a result of this single Movement Transaction the system updates the Location History, Current Location and (where appropriate) Usual Location. Obviously the ability to update all these fields with only one Movement Transaction will save you time as well as guarding against errors. Similarly, the Inventory Transaction Window is used to record Date and Time, the Person who inventoried the object, and where the item and its parts were inventoried.

If during an Inventory you find an object to be in a different location, you can change its current location during that Inventory Transaction. Otherwise an inventory transaction leaves the Current Location unchanged but updates the location history with details of when this inventory took place, and updates the Last Confirmed Location field. Inventory fields can also be searched on, allowing you to find all items which have not been inventoried for more than 'x' years.

Other features and capabilities of the Location and Inventory facility include the following:

• The ability to specify Location in this hierarchical authority with increasing finesse (e.g. West Wing/1stFloor/Room 12/Cabinet 20 /Drawer3)
• The ability to record location at part level without having to create separate object records for each part.
• A pseudo part, '/' (meaning Rest of Object) which can be used to denote all the parts of the object that are not explicitly stated. This is useful if moving one part of a 36 piece dinner set to location X and 35 parts to location Y.
• The ability to qualify Locations by recording a Person (individual or institution) responsible for the custody of the item. For Loans you can just have a single pseudo location ′Loaned′ and the Person will tell you to whom. This is in addition to any loans recording facilities you may use. It saves creating scores of external locations.
• The ability to find all objects at a location (including its sub-locations) in a specified period, (e.g. to reconstruct what was in the Dining Room in 1978 or in Storage Room Z during a suspected infestation).
• The ability to record the movement of multiple objects at the same time using the Bulk Moves Window. This can be either to a specific location or back to the Usual Location as defined for each object. This means that instead of performing ten different Movement Transactions to return ten objects to ten different Usual Locations, you can perform one Bulk Move and simply indicate that the ten objects are to be returned to their Usual Locations (as defined in the system). There is even an option to allow you to see and confirm the Usual Location before the system moves the object back to it.
• The ability to record common inventory details for multiple objects using the Bulk Inventory Window, and to ask the system to reconcile these items against its records by reporting exceptions (items recorded at this location not inventoried, and inventoried items not previously recorded at this location).
• The ability to disallow movement transactions for certain objects. This is needed for immovable objects (e.g. set in concrete) and objects catalogued at multiple levels (e.g. a portfolio and the works in the portfolio). Then you can choose whether the moveable objects are the works individually (if they are physically separate), or the portfolio as a whole (if they are bound together). Setting the ′Disallow Movement′ flag prevents mistakes.
• The ability to record inventories and movements at remote sites which are not connected to your network. You can download the objects you wish to work with and the current version of your location authority onto a notebook PC and can then confirm or update their locations on that notebook in an Excel spreadsheet. This is loaded back into Vernon CMS and processed to update the locations on the live system.
• The Batch Location Update facility allowing you to enter details of a movement or inventory any number of objects into a spreadsheet-style form for processing as a batch. This saves you from bringing up each record to process each transaction
• Every location movement or inventory transaction is also recorded on the Movement Log file from which you can generate reports of movements (e.g. a monthly report to each department showing their objects′ movements in the past month)