MarcEdit 7 Christmas Update: Preview

As is my habit — there will be an update coming out around Christmas. And while it won’t be a large update (since MarcEdit 7 was just made available) — I think there will be a couple of new features that will make the changes worth it.

Clustering:

I’m continuing to enhance the clustering functionality — and for the Christmas update, I will be adding the ability to search within the clusters, as well as the ability to extract records from selected clusters (rather than just providing the ability to change the data in the cluster). By allowing the extraction of records within a cluster, this will give users the ability to use the clustering tools to extract record sets, and then run specific reports or perform selected edits against very targeted data.

Extracting Records:

New Search Functionality:

These two new clustering options should, I hope, give users some additional control over not only how they search for and interact with clustered data within MarcEdit, but also provides some new functionality that continues to enable all catalogers, regardless of their technical background, the ability to utilize the power clustering data can provide.

Copy Field Changes:

One common question that usually involves utilizing a fairly complicated regular expression using MarcEdit’s multi-line replacement mode (which can be terrifying to use for some), the the ability to move fields from the same field group into a new field group. For example, when converting data from a non-MARC metadata format, it might not be possible to setup a process that distinguishes between first and second authors. So, the final transformation may look something like this:

=100 \\$aLast Name, First Name
=100 \\$aLast Name2, First Name
=245 10$aTitle

In this instance, it would be desirable to be able to move the data from the second 100 field into a 700 field. As noted above, this was previously accomplished with a regular expression. However, this update introduces a new option in the Copy Field Function: Move Field Data.

The Move Field Data option allows users to identify a field group, and then set the positions that shouldn’t be changed. So, in my example, I would set the preserve position to 1, which would then update field #2 (or 3 or 4 or 5, etc.). Currently the tool does not allow you to preserve a range of values, but I may try to flush out that functionality in anticipation of the request, assuming that the process is straightforward. If it’s not, then I’ll wait for the request.

MarcEdit 6 to MarcEdit 7 Migration

I’m working on a set of common questions that have come up, but one of the most common has been related to moving tasks from MarcEdit 6 into MarcEdit 7. By default, the tool attempts to make that transition for you — but in many cases, the process isn’t able to automatically transfer the data. So, I’ve been spending some time and adding this into the initial startup wizard. Now, when you first install MarcEdit 7 — the tool will attempt to determine if you have a copy of MarcEdit 6 installed on your machine. If you do, a new Wizard page will show up to walk you through the data migration process.

The new Wizard page looks like the following:

If you click on Select Data to Migrate

At this point, you can select the classes of data that you want to import into MarcEdit 7. For some users, they might want to pull all the data into MarcEdit 7; while others may just want tasks. Select Export — and then wait for the tool to complete migrating your data.

Linux Version of MarcEdit 7

Finally, on Christmas, I will post a zip file with instructions for running MarcEdit 7 on Linux. I’m still wrapping up the “build” but I’m hoping that this version of MarcEdit 7 will require zero configuration work to make it run — though, I will be updating the ReadMe file to match the new install/run information.

And I think that is mostly it. I may include some additional help information, a couple new videos/documentation pages — and the MacOS version of MarcEdit is still on target for Jan. 1, 2018.

If you have any questions, feel free to let me know.

–tr