Batch metadata editing
- David Walker
ScholarWorks provides batch metadata editing using CSV (Excel) files. Each campus can download the latest metadata (updated each night) from the ‘Metadata’ link in the sidebar of your dashboard.
The metadata will come in a .zip file, containing multiple CSV files – one for each data model / form. You can edit the spreadsheets as you like and email the changes to the Chancellor’s Office. At that point, we will create a report showing what changes will be made. Once you approve those, we’ll run the changes for real in ScholarWorks.
Fields with multiple values
Fields with multiple values should use the pipe symbol ( | ) to separate each value.
Example:
Activity Oriented Instruction|Metrics|Measures|Education
Fields with person data
Creators, advisors, committee members, and other person metadata in ScholarWorks are composed of four subfields: name, email, institution, ORCID.
In the CSV export, these subfields are delimited by two carets ( ^^ ).
Examples:
Jim Lee^^jlee@csu.edu^^California State University^^0000-0001-2345-6789
Ram Venkatesan^^0000-0009-8765-4321
Fiona Staples^^Saga University^^0000-0002-4681-3579
Other than the person’s name, which needs to be the first element – and should not have any carets preceding it – the other subfields can be in any order. The importer will determine if the subfield is an email address or ORCID ID if the value matches those respective patterns (so make sure they do!).
Otherwise, if the subfield value matches neither pattern and also does not have a number or '@' in it, the importer will assume the value is the institution name. This may change in the future if we add more subfields.
Visibility
The visibility of the work can be set using the ‘visibility’ field. Use the internal value for visibility, not the public label that displays to end users. Those are:
internal value | public label |
|---|---|
open | Public |
authenticated | Cal State |
campus | Campus |
restricted | Private |
When setting an embargo or lease date, you will use these same values in the ‘visibility_during_embargo’ and ‘visibility_after_embargo’ fields.
Simplifying your CSV file
When editing a CSV export, here's a couple of basic tips to keep in mind:
The "id" column must remain intact. This column also must always have a value in it.
To simplify the CSV, you can simply remove any columns you do NOT wish to edit (except for the "id" column, see #1). Don't worry, removing the entire column won't delete metadata (see #3).
When importing a CSV file, the importer will overlay the metadata onto what is already in the repository to determine the differences. It only acts on the contents of the CSV file, rather than on the complete item metadata. This means that the CSV file that is exported can be manipulated quite substantially before being re-imported. Rows (works) or columns (metadata elements) can be removed and will be ignored.
For example, if you only want to edit "subject," you can remove all columns EXCEPT for "id" and "subject" so that you can just manipulate the "subject" field. On import, ScholarWorks will see that you've only included the "subject" field in your CSV and therefore will only update the "subject" metadata field for any items listed in that CSV.Because removing an entire column does NOT delete metadata value(s), if you actually wish to delete a metadata value you should leave the column intact, and simply clear out the appropriate row's value (in that column).