Level of description: how to merge multiple terms

[Alfredo Mignini]

Dear all,

We are running AtoM 2.6.2 and we're experiencing the same problem after every import: a multiplication of terms in level of description field.

In particular, as we recently imported an  entire archival description (from a second AtoM 2.6.2 instance) via XML 2002, we noticed that all

       <c level="series">

as well as

      <c level="file">

were transformed into

        <c otherlevel="" level="otherlevel">

Both AtoM instances run in French, so that <c level="series"> and <c level="file"> appear as "Série"/"Dossier" on the public interface. After the import they appear as "series"/"file", resulting into the creation of two new levels of description.

Is there a way to merge those terms? Any advice on how to run the process (it seems there's not a intuitive way to do it via the settings panel).

Thank you in advance,

Alfredo Mignini

Archives contestataires

2bis rue de la Tannerie - 1227 Carouge

archi...@archivescontestataires.ch

www.archivescontestataires.ch

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Alfredo, 

Some of this behavior may be how you are importing; some of may be issues with AtoM and multilinguality - it gets complicated supporting many different languages as both default / source cultures and translations as well as having culture fallback (i.e. showing the original source language string) in place when resources are only partially translated. 

Things that can affect how culture is handled on imports: 

• The default installation culture of your AtoM instance
• The language element listed in the header of the EAD import file
• Whether any other languages used have been added in AtoM's language settings to the user interface
• The language of the user interface at the time you import
• The language of your terms, and whether or not they have translations added in the target culture of the description

Nonetheless, I believe there is a way that we can resolve this for you. AtoM has a command-line task for taxonomy normalization - see: 

• https://www.accesstomemory.org/docs/latest/admin-manual/maintenance/cli-tools/#taxonomy-normalization
  

Essentially, you give it a culture (or if you don't specify, it will use English as the default) and the name of a taxonomy. For any terms that are found in that culture with the EXACT same name, the oldest of them will be preserved. Meanwhile, all of the term relations (i.e. the links to descriptions or other record types you can make in AtoM) will be moved from the newer term to the old before it is deleted. So it is essentially a way of "combining" the terms. Keep in mind that it only is the relations that are moved - there is no moving or merging of term metadata like the Scope notes, Source notes, Use For labels, etc. Any of that you wish to keep must be manually added to the older term. 

So: if you take the time to navigate to the Levels of description taxonomy and edit those accidental terms so that the authorized form of name of the terms are exact matches of the existing ones you want to keep, and then you run the task like so: 

• php symfony taxonomy:normalize --culture="en" "Levels of description"
  

Then I believe this should accomplish what you need. 

Meanwhile, in the future if trying to import French descriptions and you want to avoid this, my recommendations would be to: 

• Make sure the default level of description terms in AtoM have French translations that match what you are using in your EAD file. For translating content in AtoM, see here. 
• Make sure that your EAD 2002 XML file contains the correct language of the content (strangely, using ISO 639-2b codes, and not the 639-1 two-letter codes used elsewhere in AtoM) listed in a language element in the profiledesc section of the EAD header: 

<langusage>
   <language langcode="fre">français</language>
</langusage>

• Make sure that French has been added in Admin > Settings > i18n languages, and the site reindexed since its addition
• Make sure that the user interface has been flipped to French using the Language menu before you run the import

As I said, there may be application bugs causing some of this behavior, and/or it may also depend whether or not your installation culture is English, French, or another culture - further testing and analysis is needed for us to be able to really improve the internationalization handling in AtoM. But hopefully these tips will help you avoid some common pitfalls!

Cheers, 

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

@accesstomemory

he / him

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