[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Importing agents into ASpace that we already have

[Brian Thomas]

I do not know everything about this specific issue by any means, but I can tell you to watch out for how you spell names in the csv if you are using the authority id function. We are implementing authority ids to actually de-dupe agents at point of import since the merger doesn't always work. BUT we have noticed that when you do this a misspelling in the name in the csv supersedes the correct spelling in the authority (which we are importing from the loc, or were until the loc made their change recently).

Brian Thomas
Electronic Records Specialist
Texas State Library and Archives Commission
1201 Brazos Street
Austin, TX 78701
PH: (512) 475-3374
e-mail: bthomas at tsl.texas.gov
tsl.texas.gov<http://tsl.texas.gov/>
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From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org [mailto:archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org] On Behalf Of Jane LaBarbara
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2017 10:03 AM
To: archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org
Subject: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Importing agents into ASpace that we already have

Good morning,

My department started populating our ASpace repository with some hand-entered information as well as a massive import of Resource Records, which included linked agents.  Now, I'm working to import legacy accession records with the CSV, and I've run into an odd problem that I'm interested to see if anyone else has solved. (We're running v1.5.1 right now, if that matters.)

I've noticed that, in some cases, if I import an accession record via the CSV file that includes a donor agent which already exists in ASpace, the pre-existing agent just gets linked to the newly imported accession record.  This is great except for when I'm trying to import the donor's address info too-I realized the address info I was trying to import was not added to the pre-existing agent record.  Once I noticed this, I thought I'd be smart and check the list of donors in my accession CSV against the agents already in ASpace.  If the agent was already in ASpace, I added the address by hand then deleted the address from the CSV file. Then I imported the CSV file.  It seems that, in at least a few cases, this resulted in the creation of a second agent, so we'll have to do a lot of merging of agent records.

I am assuming that if the content of certain fields in the agent record I'm trying to import match those in an agent record already in ASpace, that will result in a merge rather than a duplicate agent creation. Does anyone know which fields I need to pay attention to?

Thanks,
Jane

/ Jane Metters LaBarbara
Assistant Curator, West Virginia & Regional History Center<https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/>
West Virginia University Libraries
(304) 293-0352 office
jane.labarbara at mail.wvu.edu<mailto:jane.labarbara at mail.wvu.edu>

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