5.3.4  Code

If you remember all the details from the Data Dictionary, you may remember this field which occurs at the Manuscript level.  On the other hand, it won't surprise anyone if you have no memory of it, since it's a rather fluid, ambiguous, multi-use field.  In-house it might represent any category of manuscripts that an institution wants to track even for non-DS purposes (those that should go to Conservation before photography?  those that are under consideration for an exhibition?  those that should be pulled for a certain class?).  Multiple codes can be inserted into the database, one per record, so the report allows you to chose which code you want the report to represent.  We inserted it into DS-Access because some institutions group manuscripts into categories and use that category as part of the identifier of images shot of these manuscripts.  Thus, as a building block of an image's URL, Code becomes "Manuscript Segment" in the URL pattern.  The point, however, is that Code has no particular reality in the larger world of medieval and renaissance manuscripts, and yet it can represent a possibly temporary reality in a given institution.   Ergo, the field and ergo, the report.