May 16, 2011

Along with creating records for objects in TMS, I'm also busy working on a Data Dictionary. This defines the basic organization of our database by giving for each field: a definition, what it consists of, and how the Museum uses it. It may seem trivial to explain something that might be obvious but creating this document ensures that information is put in the same places, the same way, no matter who is entering it.  Here is an example of one of our entries (warning-technical jargon ahead!):

Field: Description
Attributes: free-text, long; alpha-numeric
Access: system admin; public (view only)
Description: Narrative text describing the object.
Example: This panoramic landscape was painted during Frederic Church's first trip to Ecuador in 1853.
Data-Entry Conventions: Expected. Available during new object creation and on object front card. If the description includes text in a non-Western European language, you can enter this text in the Unicode field. Western-style characters with diacriticals and other marks can be pasted into the regular free-text field.