[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Formatting Agents and Subjects

Fri Oct 20 15:57:17 EDT 2023

Hi Sarit,

Adding to what’s already been said, I vaguely remember from our migration that there’s a deduping algorithm involved in Agents import/creation that includes looking at the string, external identifier/EAD @authfilenumber and a few other things; Brian Harrington explained it to me at the time.

Note that if you work directly on the db, it is possible to load records that don’t pass the internal validation, including near-duplicates. We had a number of terms in our instance that way that were differentiated only by their source, and they caused a bit of a headache to clean up.

I hope that helps!

Regine

Regine Heberlein (she/her)
Library IT Data Analyst
609-258-6156
heberlei at princeton.edu<mailto:heberlei at princeton.edu>

**My working day may not be your working day. Please do not feel obliged to reply to this email outside of your normal working hours.**

From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org <archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org> on behalf of Clair, Kevin <kmc35 at psu.edu>
Date: Friday, October 20, 2023 at 3:47 PM
To: Archivesspace Users Group <archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org>
Subject: Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Formatting Agents and Subjects
Hi Sarit,

Miloche's reply came in as I was writing mine, and I have only a little to add to it:

This may have changed, but I think you can import two subject headings with the same name if they have different term types. At Denver we had instances where we needed to import the same term as a Topical heading and a Genre/Form heading, and if I remember correctly we were able to do that even in cases where the terms were local headings only (so they wouldn't have had Getty or LCSH URIs in the Authority ID field).

We imported Subjects and Agents before Resources and Archival Objects at Denver when we migrated from Re:Discovery. That was so that we were able to pair terms and term types with their new ArchivesSpace URIs when we imported resources and archival objects that needed to link to them.

hopefully that helps / is still accurate information!  -k
________________________________
From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org <archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org> on behalf of Kottman, Miloche <mkottman at ku.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2023 3:41 PM
To: Archivesspace Users Group <archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org>
Subject: Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Formatting Agents and Subjects

Sarit,

Here are my answers to some of your questions:

  1.  To my knowledge, there is no bulk updater for subjects and/or agents. I do not use the API, as I have not had the time to dive in like I have been wanting to. Am I missing a way to do this via the SUI?

You can bulk load but you can’t bulk update without the API.

  1.  Our agents have not displayed dates. I just edited one agent name and found there had been dates entered. When I saved the record, the dates suddenly appeared, however, the dates appear in parenthesis, not with a comma as found in LOC. I.e., Smith, John, 1967-2014, instead I get Smith, John (1967-2014). What am I missing? Can this be changed?

The display of the date with the name will depend on which date field has the date.  There is a Dates field in the Name Forms section and there’s a Dates of Existence section a littler further down.

·         If there is a date in the Dates field in the Name Forms section, it will display as part of the name in whatever format you’ve entered it in

·         If there is not a date in the Dates field in the Name Forms section but there is a date in the Dates of Existence section, the Dates of Existence date will display in parentheses after the name.

·         If you want to keep the Dates of Existence in the record but you don’t want it to display, remove the checkmark next to “automatically generate” under the Sort Name field in the Name Forms section and manually edit the Sort Name to the display you’d like to see.

  1.  If I recall correctly, if I do a bulk importer including all the subjects and agents, the system will not identify duplicates and will instead create a new record unless I have the ID and use that instead of text. Do I have that correct?

The Agent records were made less restrictive when the “light mode” features were added so, yes, the way to avoid duplicates is to have a Record ID

  1.  I’ve not delved too deep into Subjects and Agents in ASpace other than very basic stuff so I am unsure how to handle subjects that start with an agent name and has subject qualifiers, would that be a subject, or an agent? i.e. Smith, John, 1967-2014 -- pictorial works

This is an Agent with the Role of Subject.  You would link to the existing agent record and then Add Term/Subdivision by just typing it in.

[cid:image003.png at 01DA0363.388E33A0]

I have no opinion on how to import a large file of records.

--Miloche

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Miloche Kottman

Head of Cataloging & Archival Processing

University of Kansas Libraries

Lawrence, KS 66045

mkottman at ku.edu<mailto:mkottman at ku.edu>

785-864-3916

From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org <archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org> On Behalf Of Hand, Sarit
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2023 12:16 PM
To: archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org
Subject: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Formatting Agents and Subjects

Hello,

I’ll apologize in advance for the chaos I am unleashing here. I am working on a project migrating an old access database collection listing to ASpace. There is a lot of subject and agent cleanup, most of which I have done. I am now trying to identify what is already in ASpace so I can use the URIs in the bulk importer. However, I am finding that our subjects and agents in ASpace were not uniformly created, so, a) finding matches is difficult, b) I’d like to clean up the records in ASpace and after all that, c) I need to get the collection uploaded, subjects, agents and all.

I have questions I need help on, either, how to… or confirming what I think I know:

  1.  To my knowledge, there is no bulk updater for subjects and/or agents. I do not use the API, as I have not had the time to dive in like I have been wanting to. Am I missing a way to do this via the SUI?
  2.  Our agents have not displayed dates. I just edited one agent name and found there had been dates entered. When I saved the record, the dates suddenly appeared, however, the dates appear in parenthesis, not with a comma as found in LOC. I.e., Smith, John, 1967-2014, instead I get Smith, John (1967-2014). What am I missing? Can this be changed?
  3.  If I recall correctly, if I do a bulk importer including all the subjects and agents, the system will not identify duplicates and will instead create a new record unless I have the ID and use that instead of text. Do I have that correct?
  4.  I’ve not delved too deep into Subjects and Agents in ASpace other than very basic stuff so I am unsure how to handle subjects that start with an agent name and has subject qualifiers, would that be a subject, or an agent? i.e. Smith, John, 1967-2014 -- pictorial works

Last but not least (and I could probably ask a million more questions)

With over a thousand new terms to be attached to almost a thousand archival object records, would I be better off first bulk importing the subjects and agents and then bulk importing the collection and link terms later? How would you handle this part?

Thank you for taking the time to read this, advise and/or answer my questions.

Cheers,

[cid:image001.png at 01DA0360.E511BE60]                                              [cid:image002.jpg at 01DA0360.E511BE60]

Sarit Hand                                                       200 Liberty St.

Digital Archivist                                               New York, NY 10281

Corporate Archives                                         T 212.621.7035

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