> -----Original Message-----
> From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Frankie Roberto
> Sent: 02 October 2009 10:28
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Recording BC Dates in Online Collections
>
> 2009/10/2 Tom Jenkins <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
> > Just wondering if anyone knew if there was an accepted standard way
> of
> > storing BC dates in collection databases so they're searchable
> online.
> > Putting negative dates seems the most obvious to me, but perhaps this
> is
> > frowned upon... I know the British Museum have BC objects online;
> anyone
> > there or anywhere else care to share their thoughts?
> >
>
> No idea. Most database 'date' types seem to have a limited range, eg in
> MySQL it's '1000-01-01' to '9999-12-31' (and yes, I had to look that
> up).
> So I guess you'd probably have to store it either as a text string, or
> as
> three separate integers (representing year, month, day), and write your
> own
> comparison and search functions.
>
> I'm mainly replying as an excuse to link to
> http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/04/making_time_saf.html
> though,
> which is a fascinating article on the different types of historical
> calendars, the certainty of different types of dates, and whether years
> are
> even "names" rather than numbers.
>
> The conclusion I drew from it was that it's probably best to assume
> that
> anything before BC 300 didn't happen. :)
Can always rely on quirksmode for interesting and insightful articles! We have a fair number of items catalogued before 300BC, but given that any system we develop isn't going to use HTML5 I'm not worried. I'm fairly sure the system we're migrating to is PHP/MySQL based (I'm not the developer), but as we would be storing just in years (we have hardly any records with finer granularity than year) I suppose the limit doesn't apply...hmm. Anyway, thanks for the link, very informative and always good to read stuff about HTML5, whatever the reasons!
>
> Frankie
>
> --
> Frankie Roberto
> Experience Designer, Rattle
> 0114 2706977
> http://www.rattlecentral.com
>
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