>The fields will purely be used for display purposes only, they are references for a staff member.
>
>The field will hold the staff at the time the record was created, so all they will be used for is a reference/history.
>
>Is that what you meant?
>Kev

I was thinking along the lines of if it were only for historical purposes, then maybe a single field would be a possible way to go.

If you were going to display the data, then separate fields would mean that you don't have to separate out the data.

If the references were meaningful & may be used to look up other information (such as description of the reference), then separate fields would have distinct advantages.

On the whole, I couldn't think of any real reason for combining the data into a single field (especially not knowing what you were trying to achieve). I see in your reply to Len, that querying may be a possibility - knowing that would convince to to use separate fields.

If the references consisted of groups of meaningful data, it might even be worth thinking of dividing even further.