Yesterday, I posted a significant update to the Windows/Linux builds and a maintenance update to the Mac build that includes a lot of prep work to get it ready to roll in a number of changes that I’ll hopefully complete this week. Unfortunately, I’ve been doing a lot of travelling, which means that my access to my mac setup has been pretty limited and I didn’t want to take another week getting everything synched together.
So what are the specific changes:
ILS Integrations
I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past three works head down working on ILS integrations. Right now, I’m managing two ILS integration scenarios — one is with Alma and their API. I’m probably 80% finished with that work. Right now, all the code is written, I’m just not getting back expected responses from their bibliographic update API. Once I sort out that issue — I’ll be integrating this change into MarcEdit and will provide a youtube video demonstrating the functionality.
The other ILS integration that I’ve been accommodating is working with MarcEdit’s MARC SQL Explorer and the internal database structure. This work builds on some work being done with the Validate Headings tool to close the authority control loop. I’ll likely be posting more about that later this week as I’m currently have a couple libraries test this functionality to make sure I’ve not missed anything. Once they give me the thumbs up, this will make its way into the MarcEditor as well.
But as part of this work, I needed to create a way for users to edit and search the local database structure in a more friendly way. So, leveraging the ILS platform, I’ve included the ability for users to work with the local database format directly within the MarcEditor. You can see how this works here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMJ_pUxyoFc&feature=youtu.be): Integrating the MarcEditor with a local SQL store. I’m not sure what the ideal use case is for this functionality — but over the past couple of weeks, it had been requested by a couple of power users currently using the MARC SQL Explorer for some data edits, but hoping for an easier to user interface. This work will be integrated into the Mac MarcEdit version at the end of this week. All the prep work (window/control development) has been completed. At this point, its just migrating the code so that it works within the Mac’s object-C codebase.
Edit Shortcuts
I created two new edit shortcuts in the MarcEditor. The first, Find Records With Duplicate Tags, was created to help users look for records that may have multiple tags or a tag/subfield combination with a set of records. This is work that can be done in the Extract Selected Records tool, but it requires a bit a trickery and knowledge of how MarcEdit formats data.
How does this work — say you wanted to know which records had multiple call numbers (050) fields in a record. You would select this option, enter 050 in the prompt, and then the tool would create for you a jump list showing all the records that met your criteria.
Convert To Decimal Degrees
The second Edit ShortCut function is the first Math function (I’ll be adding two more, specifically around finding records with dates greater than or less than a specific value) targeting the conversion of Degree/Minutes/Seconds to decimal degrees. The process has been created to be MARC agnostic, so users can specify the field, and subfields to process. To run this function, select it from the Edit Shortcuts as demonstrated in the screenshot below:
When selected, you will get the following prompt:
This documents the format for defining the field/subfields to be processed. Please note, it is important to define the all four potential values for conversion — even if they are not used within the record set.
Using this function, you can now convert a value like:
=034 1\$aa$b1450000$dW1250000$eW1163500$fN0461500$gN0420000
To:
=034 1\$aa$b1450000$d+125.0000$e+116.5800$f+046.2500$g+042.0000
This function should allow users to transition their cartographic data to a format that is much more friendly to geographic interpretation if desired.
Bug Fixes:
This update also addressed a bug in the Build New field parser. If you have multiple arguments, side-by-side, within the same field grouping (i.e., {100$a}{100$b}{100$c} — the parser can become confused. This has been corrected.
Updates:
Included and update to the linked data rules file, updating the 7xx fields to include the $t in the processing. Also updated the UNIMARC translation to include a 1:1 translation for 9xx data.
Over the next week, I hope to complete the Alma integration, but will focusing the development work in my free time on getting the Mac version synched with these changes.
–tr