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February 2011

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From:
Hans BKK <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
MarcEdit support in technical and instructional matters <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 27 Feb 2011 15:14:27 +0700
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Hi all, noob here, both to the list and to MARCedit. Let me start by
thanking (mostly but not only) Terry for this wonderful tool, as well
as those of you that have been contributing to the development process
over the years.

My current issues:

Due to the limitations of my ILS' MARC-editing functionality, I'm
exporting a batch of my ILS' records (biblio level only) in order to
merge in enhancing data from matching MARC records from other sources,
and them bringing them back into the ILS using the Delimited Text
add-in.

I'd like to do the "data massaging" in a spreadsheet (I find
OpenOffice better at text-handling than Excel). I put all the MARC
records for a given title (including my ILS' "old" one) into one
worksheet, so it's easy to see the different fields and their
contents, cut and paste, delete unused fields, consolidate everything
into one row and then convert it back to MARC.

(Side note - it would be great if such functionality were available as
a MARCedit add-on - put multiple MARC records side by side (all for
the same biblio), tic which fields you want to keep from which sources
and merge them all into one - sorry I'm not a coder nor have the
resources to sponsor, just putting the idea out there (as if it's a
new idea I'm sure 8- and I realize it wouldn't be that easy to code,
and maybe not many people would want to do this)

I *am* surprised however that once I've used MARCedit to convert
*from* MARC to tab-delimited, and the latter contains the
field/subfield tags in the first row, the Delimited Text tool to
convert it *back* to MARC doesn't "just work" - I have to re-define
the field-to-tag mappings all over again. Not that big a deal, but one
would think the files resulting from going in one direction could be
easily re-purposed for going back in the other. Manually adding lines
to the profile list for any new mappings would of course be trivial
and pretty much self-explanatory.

So that's IMO an area that could use improvement - easy round-tripping
back and forth between MARC and CSV - but as I said NBD just an
inconvenience.


This next one is more serious, in that it requires a lot more trouble
and skill to overcome than the above. This is the fact that the
MARC-to-CSV direction concatenates all the multiple-field values (e.g.
700$a, 500$a) into a single column separated by semicolons, which when
going back in the other direction results, in a single such field with
everything - potentially completely different categories of
information - all squished in together, much less readable/useful for
my library's patrons than keeping them separate.

I'm looking at two possible workarounds - use the spreadsheet tool to
do a "text-to-column" style splitting of the data manually, or use two
separate target files for the MARC-to-CSV conversion, both containing
the control key field, but one for single-fields and the other for
repeating ones. This will allow them to be brought into the
spreadsheet with different delimiters spec'd, so the repeating fields
stay separate. However this would then mean massaging their data in a
separate step and then also an added step to merge them back later,
either before or while bringing them back into the ILS.

Both are major kludges that IMO shouldn't be necessary.

I'm hoping (best case) I'm missing something here in my use of the
MARCedit tools and that someone will enlighten me on how to keep these
repeating fields separate during the MARC-to-CSV step.

Next-best possibility is that someone suggests a more elegant
workaround solution than the kludges outlined above.

And obviously it would be great if future improvement to MARCedit
would make these processes easier.

Thanks for your time and consideration, and in advance for any and all
responses.

________________________________________________________________________

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