Default data?

[sssfar...@gmail.com]

Hi All, I'm new to ATOM, not technical and not a developer. I'm working in a trial version of 2.4 provided by LibraryHost and planning implementing with them and upgrading to 2.5. Currently I'm saddled with a MS Word document containing content that will eventually become 5,000 authority records. I experimented with getting the content into an Excel spreadsheet to convert to a CSV file for import, but reformatting in DACS for the spreadsheet took so much work it felt easier to just skip that and create the authority records by hand. Many of fields in these records - particularly the control fields - will have the same data in every record. Is there any way to set defaults for these fields so I don't have to type the same thing literally 5,000 times? Appreciate any guidance anyone can provide. Thanks! Eva

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Eva, 

Welcome to the AtoM community! 

Unfortunately, AtoM doesn't currently have the ability to set default text content for specific fields, or to set up a custom reusable record skeleton/template. I think working with a CSV might be your best bet, as you can easily copy values all the way down a column. 

A couple things of note I thought I'd mention: 

First, we maintain copies of all our CSV templates on the wiki, here - including one for authority records. See: 

• https://wiki.accesstomemory.org/Resources/CSV_templates  
  

For archival descriptions, ISAD(G) and DACS correlate very closely, minus a few differences in labels, and a couple fields. An easy way to create a crosswalk for yourself would be to import our Example ISAD CSV template, and then look at the resulting import in AtoM's user interface in the DACS template - and/or, open a blank DACS edit template, populate each field with the DACS field name and standard number, and then export it - the export will use the ISAD template, so you can see which CSV column names correspond to which fields names in DACS. 

One important warning! Be VERY cautious working with Microsoft products when preparing data - generally we advise against it. AtoM expects text to use UTF-8 character encoding, and CSVs should use unix-style linebreaks (invisible characters in a spreadsheet that tell programs where one row ends and another begins). Unfortunately, Microsoft has traditionally been very bad at implementing well-supported standards, and instead, they have used their own custom line endings and custom character encoding (WinLatin). On import, this can cause all sorts of problems, from mangled text to hundreds of blank rows importing as descriptions. 

Instead, we recommend that you work with a spreadsheet application like LibreOffice Calc: it is open source and therefore free to download, but more importantly, whenever you open a CSV with Calc, the first thing you get is a configuration dialogue with a preview pane, where you can configure the character set, language, separator(s), and text delimiters:

Note that cutting and pasting out of a Word doc with the wrong character encodings can still bring unexpected characters into a Calc spreadsheet. At the very least, make sure you close, save, and reopen the Calc spreadsheet after doing so to make sure that all characters and diacritics look like they are displaying properly. There are ways to set the character encoding in MS products to UTF-8 but they bury the settings, so you'll need to do some online searching for options and instructions. 

For more on this in our documentation, see:

• https://www.accesstomemory.org/docs/latest/user-manual/import-export/csv-import/#verify-character-encoding-and-line-endings 

In general, we always recommend making a backup first if you are importing data directly into a production instance of AtoM - just in case! 

Finally, AtoM depends on community support for the development of new features, either via community contributed code, or else development sponsorship. You can read more about how we maintaina and develop AtoM here on the wiki, if you're interested: 

• https://wiki.accesstomemory.org/Development/Philosophy
  

If developing a pre-populated template for rapid record creation is a priority for your institution and you'd like to sponsor an enhancement, feel free to contact me offline and Artefactual can prepare development estimates. 

Cheers, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

he / him

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 6:50 PM <sssfar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi All, I'm new to ATOM, not technical and not a developer. I'm working in a trial version of 2.4 provided by LibraryHost and planning implementing with them and upgrading to 2.5. Currently I'm saddled with a MS Word document containing content that will eventually become 5,000 authority records. I experimented with getting the content into an Excel spreadsheet to convert to a CSV file for import, but reformatting in DACS for the spreadsheet took so much work it felt easier to just skip that and create the authority records by hand. Many of fields in these records - particularly the control fields - will have the same data in every record. Is there any way to set defaults for these fields so I don't have to type the same thing literally 5,000 times? Appreciate any guidance anyone can provide. Thanks! Eva

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