I’ve had a few folks lately asking if I could expand MarcEdit’s build links tooling beyond MARC data. The idea here is that:
- a lot of library data isn’t in marc
- there are a lot of different workflows where linked data starts to make its way into the process
So, with this update, I’ve tried to address both request through changes to the Build Links tooling and to the API.
Tooling
In the Build Links tool, I’ve added the ability to directly interact with Excel (binary and xml) and tab delimited files. The tool, when it encounters those formats, will prompt the user to identify the column and vocabulary that should be searched. Data will then be saved back to a new file of the same format as the source.
API
To enable the above functionality, I had to create a new API point that allowed for individual term look up and for data normalization. These are not in the COM object yet, but will be once I determine if any other values need exposed. Right now, these new API points are exposed via the .NET assembly.
You can see this work in action — here: https://twitter.com/reese_terry/status/1026151986008399873
This stream includes a link to a youtube video that demonstrates the process on Windows — however, the process works as well on current MacOS builds.
Let me know if you have questions.
–tr