Over-active Auto-generation of Authority Records from Creator and Name Access Points Fields

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samanth...@fitnyc.edu

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Jul 26, 2018, 11:05:02 AM7/26/18
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Hello collective wisdom!

One of our interns here has been entering a collection into AtoM. As she enters new archival records, she either retypes or pastes names into the Creator and Name Access Point fields, rather than choosing Authority Records from a drop-down list. Often, her reasons for doing this is that the drop-down list does not present itself when she starts typing into either of those fields. 

It's been easier for her to paste or retype names into these fields. When she does this, AtoM creates a new Authority Record for whatever name she enters, even when such name already exists. I've found myself spending way too much time re-entering correct authorized names into her records, and deleting the duplicitous ones. 

Has anyone else come up against this issue? How have you solved it?

Thanks so much!


Victoria Peters

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Jul 26, 2018, 11:26:32 AM7/26/18
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Hi

 

If you want to link to an authority record (or access term) already in AtoM, you must select it from the drop-down list. You could type or paste the full name in but then you must wait for the name to appear in the drop down list and select it. Otherwise, Atom will think it’s a new record and accordingly create a new authority record. It’s possible that your intern hasn’t been waiting long enough for the drop-down list to appear. We’ve encountered that a few times. Alternatively, if she’s pasting the name or typing it in full, she might be making a mistake or not getting it in exactly the same form as it is already in the authority record and so AtoM won’t recognise it.

 

I hope that helps.

 

Victoria

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Dan Gillean

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Jul 30, 2018, 11:38:45 AM7/30/18
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Hi Samantha, 

Victoria is correct. We did try to improve the behavior to prevent exact matches on authorized form of name from creating a duplicate record in version 2.3 - see the following ticket: 
However, there are still limitations  - one of our developers noted the following in implementing these improvments: 

I've done some tweaks in autocomplete.js that make creating duplicates harder, but there is still a related issue where a duplicate will be created if you type a new entry that has a match in the database but you finish typing before the server responds with the suggested options. For this particular case I think that we are going to rethink the way that we are adding new values in the server and consider to do all the changes including the submission of the form within one transaction, but that would be a major refactor.

A simpler version of this is: if you cut and paste and then leave the field too fast, AtoM doesn't have the time to check if there's a match that already exists, and prevent you from creating a duplicate. Slowing down in your data entry will a) allow the autocomplete to suggest a match, and b), even when a match doesn't show up, it will hopefully give AtoM the time to check for an existing exact match before you click out of the field, and prevent the duplicate from creating a new record. 

Regards, 

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

On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 11:26 AM, Victoria Peters <victori...@strath.ac.uk> wrote:

Hi

 

If you want to link to an authority record (or access term) already in AtoM, you must select it from the drop-down list. You could type or paste the full name in but then you must wait for the name to appear in the drop down list and select it. Otherwise, Atom will think it’s a new record and accordingly create a new authority record. It’s possible that your intern hasn’t been waiting long enough for the drop-down list to appear. We’ve encountered that a few times. Alternatively, if she’s pasting the name or typing it in full, she might be making a mistake or not getting it in exactly the same form as it is already in the authority record and so AtoM won’t recognise it.

 

I hope that helps.

 

Victoria

 

From: ica-atom-users@googlegroups.com [mailto:ica-atom-users@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of samanth...@fitnyc.edu
Sent: 26 July 2018 16:05
To: AtoM Users <ica-atom-users@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [atom-users] Over-active Auto-generation of Authority Records from Creator and Name Access Points Fields

 

Hello collective wisdom!

 

One of our interns here has been entering a collection into AtoM. As she enters new archival records, she either retypes or pastes names into the Creator and Name Access Point fields, rather than choosing Authority Records from a drop-down list. Often, her reasons for doing this is that the drop-down list does not present itself when she starts typing into either of those fields. 

 

It's been easier for her to paste or retype names into these fields. When she does this, AtoM creates a new Authority Record for whatever name she enters, even when such name already exists. I've found myself spending way too much time re-entering correct authorized names into her records, and deleting the duplicitous ones. 

 

Has anyone else come up against this issue? How have you solved it?

 

Thanks so much!

 

 

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samanth...@fitnyc.edu

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Jul 31, 2018, 10:33:50 AM7/31/18
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Thanks everyone! I did see a variation of the language Victoria posted in the Wiki, so I am aware of the need to choose from the drop-down only to avoid duplicate authority records. 

Alas, when I watched my intern working in AtoM to see what was going on, I verified that her drop-down list was not appearing in any field, even after a long wait time. We tried typing in one letter to prompt it, and also tried just clicking into the field and waiting. We waited as long as 15 seconds. That should be enough time, right?

So, because she is having this odd issue where AtoM is not showing her the taxonomy in a drop-down, as a workaround I've asked her not to add names to child records that are already in parent records. She is, instead, adding any necessary detail into the proper descriptive fields. 

If anyone has any other workarounds that won't badly break archival descriptive guidelines, I'd appreciate the input.

Also, does anyone have any ideas as to why my intern's drop-down list isn't showing up, or how I might be able to kick it back into cooperating? She's the only user here who is having this issue.

Thanks!

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Dan Gillean

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Jul 31, 2018, 6:07:03 PM7/31/18
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Hi Samantha, 

You noted the following in your last reply:

...as a workaround I've asked her not to add names to child records that are already in parent records. She is, instead, adding any necessary detail into the proper descriptive fields. 

This is actually best practice, if we're talking about creators! If you have already added the creator name at the top level, and it's not a different name at lower levels, AtoM will automatically inherit the creator name to those lower levels. The same is true for the repository name. This follows the ICA's general principles of description, to add information at the highest relevant level, and not to repeat information unnecessarily at lower levels. 

In fact, it's actually better for usability and scalability in AtoM NOT to add the creator and repository name at lower levels. For one, this will make the "Related descriptions" sidebar on the creator's authority record page so cluttered as to be nearly useless to researchers, and every link adds more permissions that AtoM must check before loading a page, and more pages that must be updated if you ever edit the authority record (which can lead to timeouts and other problems). 

In terms of why this is happening... if she's the only user having this issue, then I might suggest double-checking the permissions of her user account, as well as the group to which her user account has been added (e.g. editors, contributors, or perhaps a custom group). See: 
I'd check both archival description permissions, and the authority record permissions. Compare them against the permissions of an account that you know works. Are they different in any way?

We can also try to get at this via a process of elimination - what is it that she has or is doing differently than other similar users? Is she using a different browser than others? Do other users added to the same user group have any issues? Can you create a new account for her and replicate the issue, or is it something particular to that account? Can she create an authority record from scratch via Add > Authority record? And so forth. 

Note that with some of the drop-downs, you need at least 3 characters for the autocomplete results to start showing up... but it does sound like there's more than that going on here. 15 seconds should have been more than enough time for the autocomplete to populate. 

Keep us posted on what you find! 

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

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samanth...@fitnyc.edu

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Aug 1, 2018, 7:12:30 PM8/1/18
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Thanks for the response!

Today when she logged in, the drop downs were working fine. Go figure...

And thanks for the reinforcement on archival best practices - it's very helpful.

Dan Gillean

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Aug 2, 2018, 11:22:13 AM8/2/18
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Very strange! 

Thanks for updating the thread, Samantha. Let us know if it happens again! Sometimes I find it can help to repeat actions such as this in an incognito / private browser window, to ensure that the browser cache is not interfering. In any case, I'm glad you've sorted it out for now! 

Regards, 

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

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