Specify Data tab- Agent

1) There are 4 agent types- person, organization, other and group. We do not use the "group" type, so please ignore that. Each of the agent types you select morph the form a little bit. The 'Other' selection removes the Address sub form, and the 'Organization' selection greys out the title, first name, middle initial and job title fields. The People selections give you access to every field.

2) Please note the first selection for 'Title' is a blank field. This is the default- while we often know if an agent is Mr or Ms, we don't know if they are Dr, Curator, or Her Majesty (an entry added to handle loans from the UK and Canada, and occasionally used for the Director of Operations)

3) this is just the initials of the agent. This field is rarely used.

4) Last names should be required. If all you have are initials, please just put them in the last name field.

5) First name is, obviously, the first name of the Agent. Leave this blank unless you know the persons first name. If all you have is an initial, do not use a period! Just the letter, please.

6) Middle initials are another one that spawn multiple records for the same person. Middle initials don't show up in the look up fields, so they are not needed for that. They are good practice for simply being accurate. The pitfall of that, of course, is the moment someone uses the workbench up-loader and does not add the initial, a new and unnecessary record will be created.

7) This is the agent's job title. Job titles include but are not limited to volunteer, student, collection manager, and professor.

8) Emails for our agents are important as this table is often queried as a way of finding out how to contact someone. If you don't know someones email, ask or do a little research. Often, professors, museum employees and even gas and oil company employees have their emails listed in a contacts page for their organization or institution.

9) Remarks are where we put general comments. For staff, student and volunteers, please use this field to record the agent's EID, and emergency contact information.

This part of the form is for recording the addresses the agent uses. Multiple addresses are allowed because many universities and museums have different mailing addresses for shipping vs. traditional mail. In some cases, we also have home addresses for researchers.

10) the current address is the primary address for the agent. Often this will be the only entry, as the current address is also the primary and shipping address.

11) If there is a primary address on top of a current address, this box must be checked for that entry.

12) if there is a shipping address the agent prefers, please check this box for that entry.

13) follow standard address formatting as closely as possible.

14) remarks field for any extra notes

15) Variety type is how you categorize the varieties. Some agents will have a different name they use to publish under, or an abbreviation. Variant is used for common misspellings and also married vs. maiden names.Vernacular is helpful for Asian names which will sometimes, based on which transliteration version is used, will have more than one way to anglicize the name.

16) this is where you record the variants.

17) follow step 4 of the image attachment protocol if there are any images, scans of business cards, screen-grabs of staff pages that need attaching.