[Sigia-l] Year Field: Combo vs. Input Box

[Everett, Andy]

Interesting question, Christopher.
              I'm for using controlled vocabularies, code lists or whatever
the current buzzword is now rather than free text input. I'm currently
working on a project cataloging data for Washington State Department of
Transportation. I find that fields with controlled lists have better data
quality than those of the free text sort. IMHO, If you plan on using the
date as a search key or sort key, data accuracy is very important. you don't
need a date of 1492 or FH67 when you expect a date of 1962. This also
assumes that there is no validation being done by the application, whether
web-based or not. If you have strict data validation then by all means use
free text. Its much more friendlier than scrolling down to the 1960s as I
would also need to do.
          

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: Laurie Gray [mailto:lgray at humancentrictech.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 6:51 AM
To: askROM at graphpaper.com; Sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Year Field: Combo vs. Input Box

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