Did you ever notice that American and Canadian phone numbers are both prefaced with the international calling code of “1”? This is because twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean, participate in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). Let’s examine how these numbers are structured, establish standards for data entry and then apply those standards to our existing records.
(more…)Tag: Constituents
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Improving the Quality of your Constituent Addresses
Since we do not tend to include the country name when addressing domestic mail, users tend to forget to enter this into the Constituent address. Having the country specified can enable you to perform certain queries, such as what is the geographic distribution for outgoing loans in a given year, and enables better formatting of the display address. Here are a few scripts I use for managing periodic maintenance on addresses in my database. (more…)
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TMS + Social Media
Institutions are increasingly engaging with their audiences through social media. This presentation is full of insights into why social networking is an important component of outreach, and explores how TMS can be used to coordinate institution activities on such platforms as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia, and more.
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Return to Sender: Address Unknown
Outside a cubicle at the Walters Art Museum hangs an envelope from a letter, mailed from the UK, bearing the institution’s Baltimore, Maryland address and a prominent stamp “Missent to Thailand.” I’m not sure which is more amusing: that the letter was sent to Thailand, or that this happens with such frequency that the Royal Mail has a dedicated stamp for just this situation. With institutions emphasizing data standards when cataloging cultural objects, are we also instituting standards for constituent addresses?
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