Here's what the Collection Object form looks like as of April 2016. Keep in mind, Specify is a 'living' database, and there are always upgrades and tweaks being made. All efforts will be made to keep this page up to date.
One of the first things to realize about this form, it's bit of a Frankensteins monster of a database form- parts taken from other tables, strings tied together from a variety of origins and so on. This section is meant to clarify some of this, and give a user enough information that they can understand what into to put where, and why. Because of this narrow focus, we're able to skip some of the things that the Quick Guide covers well enough.
Review the primer on relational databases to see how all these sub-forms relate to other tables and 'tie in' to the Collection Object form.
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Basic FormatCatalog numbers at NPL are unique. Specify will not let you save 2 Collection Object records with the same catalog number. The format is pretty simple, and the catalog number field on the data entry form won't let you save an incorrectly formatted number.
Simply put, the catalog format is 3 alphanumeric digits, 8 numeric digits, then 3 alphanumeric digits again.
Over the decades, NPL has acquired a variety of collections. Many of these have their own catalogs, and for the most part, we have been able to keep |
