Re: Names and armory of defunct groups

[goldschm@hal.com (Stephen R. Gold)]

Poster: goldschm@hal.com (Stephen R. Gold)

} Dave Montuori wrote:
} A further thought comes to me: For research purposes it would be a good
} idea for the *on-line* armorial to keep a record of names and armory that
} have been released -- with an explicit entry saying "this name/armory was
} released in Mmm Yyyy" -- then it's obvious that at some time, that name or
} armory *did* actually exist.
} 
} Question to Laurel and Morsulus, who I've CC'd: How easy would this be to
} implement, assuming is hasn't been already?

Evan:

My predecessor believed in deleting items from the database when they
were released.  I stopped deleting released items from the database
several years ago.  Since then I've been re-entering the lost items,
working backward one letter at a time.  At the present time, all
released items from July 1985 onward ought to have records in the
database.  So yes, it's in the process of being implented.

How are they recorded in the database?  Released items are a special
case of obsolete items, which also include changed, corrected,
transferred, redesignated, and converted items.  Obsolete entries can
be recognized in the database by the presence of a dash in the second
field.  Often there is a note in the fifth field that indicates what
happened, such as "(-released)".  The second date in the second field
is the release date.  So all the information you want is there.

As an experiment, I included information on obsolete items in the 19th
update to the Armorial, in a strikeout font.  I'm considering doing the
same for the 7th ed. Armorial.

Information on released items can also be found via the Web-based
search forms (http://www.sca.org/heraldry/OandA).

-Iulstan, Morsulus
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