One of the new features in MarcEdit 5.0 is the ability to verify URLs for data within specific fields, or every field within a group of MARC records. Its actually a pretty cool little feature. Essentially, one access the function by selecting Add-ins/Verify URLs from the Main Window. When selected, you will see the following window:
You put the file tha tyou wish to check in the Input file, a destination location for the report, specify the report type (HTML or XML) and what the title field is for these records (remember, MarcEdit is MARC neutral). Finally, there are two additional options — an XSLT file and the Fields. The XSLT file is the file used to translate the XML results file into HTML. I provide a basic that produces the following results file: urls.html, but you can edit it so that the output makes sense to you. Lastly, there is the fields textbox. By default, the word “all” is in this box. This tells MarcEdit to search all MARC fields for URLs. If you want to search just specific fields, enter those field numbers in the box with a new line separating each field. So for example, if I wanted to validate urls in the 500 and 856 fields, it would look like this:
Its a pretty simple little tool. Obviously, I need to take it to that next step where the results file automatically accesses the MarcEditor, but I haven’t gotten to that point yet.
–Terry