Help needed in Arctos: bulk editing records

[happiah-madson]

Tell us what you are trying to do

I'm curating some records from when we first migrated to Arctos (i.e., chaos times when we were figuring out how to handle things, etc.) and there are a lot of changes that I want to make to some of our earliest records to make them better. Is there a way that I can do this in bulk? (I'm coming from a system where I could download the data from a record, make changes to it, and re-upload the data to overwrite the old/incorrect data, which I think is not possible here).

Is my only course of action to manually edit each record online? Is there a HOW TO page on this that I missed? @campmlc @dustymc @mkoo

What are relevant pages in Arctos

Provide a link to or a description of the page where you need help.

For example: this batch of specimens: https://arctos.database.museum/search.cfm?accn_trans_id=21138599

1. I want the verbatim identification moved out of remarks and into the field that now exists
2. I want the event method moved out of event attribute and into event.
3. I want to clean up the remarks in the parts (this is an example of remarks that are more for us and don't need to be public.)

[Jegelewicz]

I want the verbatim identification moved out of remarks and into the field that now exists

Download the current IDs, then put them into the {Identification Bulkloader](https://arctos.database.museum/loaders/BulkloadIdentification.cfm) the way you want them to be using the existing_order_change column to set the old IDs to 0

If the old IDs bother you, give Dusty a list of catalog numbers and ask him to remove the IDs that are order 0

[happiah-madson]

(oh man, @Jegelewicz I was on the fence about tagging you on this issue, but here you are ❤❤❤ )

I will give this a shot in part because I need to get more comfortable doing this kind of stuff. Could I get over it? yes, probably. Will I? 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬

[Jegelewicz]

I want the event method moved out of event attribute and into event.

Does "into event" mean put it here?

There is no bulk tool for this, but you could just make a file with the catalog numbers and the value you want in that field and ask Dusty to SQL them in. Get the old ones by first doing a record search for the records you need changed, using the tools menu to get related events, then downloading them with their attributes.

[Jegelewicz]

@happiah-madson the nice thing about #8515 (comment) is that you have the old ID for comparison, just in case something goes awry. That makes it easy to make corrections if necessary. But I am sure it will work the first time.

[Jegelewicz]

I want to clean up the remarks in the parts (this is an example of remarks that are more for us and don't need to be public.)

I think I need an example. By cleanup, do you mean remove or put somewhere else?

[happiah-madson]

Does "into event" mean put it here?

It sure does. Okay, I think I can do that!

[happiah-madson]

I think I need an example. By cleanup, do you mean remove or put somewhere else?

Realistically, I think in this case I want "put into a curatorial/hidden field that does not yet exist."

Like in this case, no one really needs to know that this was collected for metagenomics/UU. Dan has been concerned with other things that are in remarks that were more or less private in our other database and now are verrrrry public.

[happiah-madson]

Download the current IDs

Is there a way to search for things that DON'T have a "verbatim identification" identfication attribute? I know (I think?) that % will give me all records that have any value in a field, but is there a way to search for records that don't have a value in a field?

[happiah-madson]

he only way I could figure out how to download identifications that included identification attributes from my found set was to download for record bulkloader, but then GUID/catalog numbers didn't download. What am I doing wrong?

[Jegelewicz]

OOF - let's see

Is there a way to search for things that DON'T have a "verbatim identification" identfication attribute? I know (I think?) that % will give me all records that have any value in a field, but is there a way to search for records that don't have a value in a field?

Nope - that's probably a request from Dusty

he only way I could figure out how to download identifications that included identification attributes from my found set was to download for record bulkloader, but then GUID/catalog numbers didn't download. What am I doing wrong?

Customize your search results to get identifications. They will come out as JSON. You can use OpenRefine to parse the JSON or write some Excel formulas to parse it.

OR ask Dusty to get them for you....