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• Special Features

Vernon Cataloguing

Special Features

Vernon has many special features in addition to all the expected standard functions described on the preceding pages. Following is a brief description of some of these.

Accession Numbers

 

Any number of accession number formats can be established for a single institution. Users can decide the rules for input, conversion, defaulting and sorting and can be sensitive to accession date and department. The system can also warn of, or prevent, duplicate accession numbers. Accession numbers can be automatically assigned to new records.

Measurements

 

Vernon CMS provides a text field for the recording of a general, textual description of the measurements of an object which allows you to specify measurements precisely as you wish to see them displayed or reported.

But it also has an aligned set of multi-value fields for recording measurements as structured data, to ensure consistency of entry and display, as well as to allow retrieval by measurements.

Measurement types can be defined for anything that can be calibrated e.g. dimensions of all types, weights, volumes, and temperatures (the system comes stocked with commonly used examples).

Vernon can automatically convert between different systems (e.g. from inches to millimetres) and can default to particular units to save typing (e.g. default to millimetres).

Dates

 

Dates occur extensively in museum records and frequently have ranges, uncertainties, and ambiguities. Vernon has an extremely powerful and flexible date handling facility that allows you to:

• choose the display format
• enter dates as a single date or as a range
• enter and retrieve on dates in a variety of formats. For example to facilitate data entry 1.1.96, 1/1/1996, 1 Jan 96 and 1 January 1996 will all be accepted and shown in the chosen display format.
• Use qualifiers such as Early, Mid, Late, Pre, Post and Circa, ?, and their synonyms
• enter notes associated with any date

Object Parts

 

There is no limit to the number of parts which can be defined for an object. These part definitions are from the Registrarial perspective and are normally created for each physically separable part. All collections management facilities including location recording operate at the Registrarial part level, allowing parts to be lent/borrowed, conserved, or exhibited.

This means that you can catalogue a 36-piece dinner set as a single record and then be able to move it as an entity or move its separate parts.

Curators and Conservators can also use the parts defined by the Registrar, but often require finer part definitions (e.g. the knob on the teapot lid). Vernon CMS therefore also allows the use of free text for commonly used terms (e.g. frame) for part names in cataloguing.

Group and Member Facility

 

It is often useful when documenting Objects that are made up of multiple independent components to record data about the group as a whole, and to then link this to the various subordinate or member objects.

Vernon CMS allows the creation of a group record which contains the common data relevant to the group as a whole, as well as linkages to the individual member or subordinate records which make up the group. For example, for an album containing 50 photographs you might wish to record information about the album itself as well as information about each of the photographs. You can create a group object record (i.e. for the album) as well as individual records for each subordinate object (i.e. for each photograph) and link these to each other.

Creation of groups provides powerful facilities:

• You can retrieve all objects which have a particular group type (e.g. all the pattern books, or all the swatches in pattern books) or all the members of a specific group (e.g. a particular pattern book).
• When viewing a record with group/member relationships you can view all of its members or groups as a browse list.
• The system can expand a list of objects to include all their members.

Other (non-hierarchical) types of relationships can also be recorded between objects. This is useful for recording relationships such as the pattern for a sample carpet square and the carpet square produced from the pattern.

Valuations

 

Full valuation details for both insurance and internal accounting can be recorded. The history is retained, sorted by date, and from this the system deduces, displays and indexes the Latest Insurance and Internal valuations.

The Bulk Valuation update tool allows you to automatically enter new specific values or percentage increases or decreases to sets of objects.

User Defined Fields

 

Although Vernon CMS is comprised of over 5000 fields controlled by more than 200 Authority files, we recognise that special collections have particular and sometimes peculiar requirements. The needs of every institution are different and there will be times when no field exists to deal with a particular type of data. These needs can often be met by simply re-naming a field. Where this is not appropriate you can assign one of the User Fields.

Each of Vernon′s major files includes the following user-definable fields of different formats: Text, Authority Controlled, Number, Money, Date and Edit Table.

Edit Tables are groups of related fields in an aligned set, and the user-defined Edit Tables in Vernon each include one Authority Controlled field, one Parts field, one Date field and one Notes field.

The Field Name Override facility also allows you to rename any field in Vernon, and an additional 40 User Symbolic (calculated) fields provide even greater flexibility.

Text Update

 

It is often necessary to add the same text to the same field for a number of records. The Text Update facility lets you do this all at once by simply supplying a list of records to be updated, the standard text to be added and the name of the field to add it to. Options include appending the text, doing a Find & Replace, and matching the case of the text during a find.

Text Sort Tool

 

This allows you to specify how text is to be modified ′on the fly′ to be sorted correctly without changing the data.