here - Geological Curators Group

designed in cooperation with DerbyshireMuseum Service for processing the county siterecords, including those for geology sites.The original specimen and locality cardsreferred to earlier are still available: theoriginal instructions underwent a revision in1980; procedural guidelines for all types ofcollection have he& developed since then(e.g. Museum Documentation Association 1981).Reference should also be made to theGeological Record Centre handbook which waspublished by the MDA on behalf of the GCGThe instructions designed to accompany eachrecord card were intended as a startingpoint, with users being encouraged to developtheir own detailed applications as a specificset of so-called internal conventions. TheHunterian Museum and Tyne and Wear CountyMuseum Service were brave enough to publishthe results of these internal discussions asthey affected geology recording (McInnes1978; Pettigrew and Holden 1978). Thelatter have since been updated.Interest in common documentation standardswas rekindled in June 1980 when the GCGconvened a further meeting at the IGS inLeeds. Soecific contributions coveredproblems in documenting palaeontological,mineralogical and petrological material,collectio< research work and sitedocumentation (Roberts 1980). Although themeeting concentrated on a series ofindividual presentations, there wasconsiderable concern about the lack ofuniform terminologies and a correspondingwillingness to accept proposals forstandardisation.Partly in response to this meeting, the MDAand GCG then called individual sessions onmineralogical terminology (November 1980 atBMNH) and the use of the geology record card(June 1981 at BMNH) (Roberts 1981a, b). Themineral meeting included a useful discussionof the relevant data categories andterminology, based on a paper prepared byPhilip Doughty. The geology meeting tendedto concentrate more on users' experience inapplying the MDA geology card. Both meetingsresulted in significant proposals to improvethe record cards and a stress on theimportance of more specific agreed recordingconventions.It was assumed that the MDA would then take alead in revising the cards and developing new,more detailed instructions, but in practiceother urgent projects intervened and therewas no opportunity to make progress. It ispossible that the lack of activity wasfortuitous. since there has been aconsiderable change in attitude towardsdocumentation in the intervening years. TheMDA is certainly much more aware of theimportance of an overall approach, with acatalogue record being just one of thecomponents of a full documentation svstem.covering the collections management andcuration of enquiries, acquisitions and loansfrom the time a specimen first comes into themuseum through all aspects of its subsequent~rocessing. The broadening of remit isillust~ate(~ by n~anunls suchas Prnctical\Iusoua l)ocu~nur~tarion (YDA 1981) and the majornew report commissioned by the OAL, Planningthe documentation of museum collections(Roberts 1985). It is also shown by thedesign of recording forms for controllingincoming specimens, the transfer of ownershipand any loans of specimens out of the museum.There has also been a growth in the use ofcomputer systems, with a number of museumsnow processing records through the MDAbureau, or - like Brighton, Leicester and theSedrrwick. Hancoclr and Manchester Universitvmuseums - adopting local facilities. Theavailability of effective microcomputers islikely to accelerate the trend towards thecomputerisation of at least some aspects ofthe museum's documentation procedures.One area which the MDA bureau hasconcentrated on is the development of systemsand expertise able to take data fromdifferent museums using different types ofcomputer with different programs, and to readand then massage this data into a uniformstyle. We aim to be able to take data from awide range of individual systems, insert itinto the data structure we have developed,and from this produce cooperative cataloguesand indexes. The problem in such acooperative exercise comes when you look atthe data itself and compare the syntax andterminology control conventions which museumshave already adopted. The rationalisation ofthese differences would require significanteffort and intellectual intervention, but itwould still be possible.COOPERATIVE PALAEO-CATALOGUE AND INDEXESAs an exercise, we took around fifty recordsfrom six of the current palaeontologyprojects dealt with by the bureau andproduced a set of catalogues/indexes. Theprojects were from:Ulster Museum, Belfast (BELUM)Kent County Museum Service (KENTM)Royal Scottish Museum (RSM)Trowbridge Museum (Wiltshire MuseumService) (TRWBM)Tyne and Wear County Museum Service(general and Old Collection) (TWCMS)The average size of the records in theseindividual projects ranged from 173 to 445data characters:173 Kent310 Ulster Museum340 Tyne and Wear (general)363 Royal Scottish Museum384 Trowbridge Museum445 Tyne and Wear (Old Collection)Despite differences in recording style andstrategy in the catalogue records from theindividual projects (see Table l), a set ofcumulative indexes were produced successfully.