Dates vs no dates

[Anne Scherman]

Hi,

 

We are migrating our Archival descriptions to AtoM from an old local system, and we now need some good advice.

 

 

Dates (eventDates) in the archival descriptions (Archival descriptions) is a mandatory field in Atom. 

 

Our problem is that we have very many series and subseries in our present archival descriptions where no date has been specified.
So what to do?

 

It doesn’t seem that Atom has any real problems with empty date fields. A warning will appear, letting us know that the field is compulsory, but it is still possible to save and publish the archive list with the field left blank.

 

Letting sub-levels inherit higher-level date fields is no solution because it becomes misleading.

 

We would prefer to have blank date fields, at least in sub-levels, or alternatively enter any character - such as a dot - to indicate that date is unknown and get the entire field suppressed in the interface.

 

Is that ok?

 

 

 

 

Best regards,

Anne Scherman

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Anne, 

The warnings are based on the recommendations found in the content standards about required fields. However - AtoM itself is extremely permissive, and will not prevent you from ignoring these warnings. In fact, you could create a totally blank record (not title, no identifier, nothing!) and AtoM would let you save it. 

I would recommend just ignoring this issue, if you don't want to add dates in. The warnings will only display to authenticated users, so your public users will never see them. 

Regards, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

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