Cleaning metadata in bulk through batch editing
Collections of any significant size or age often include data that is not consistent across records. Frequently this data can be normalized by applying a large number of small but similar changes across groups of records. Tools that support bulk changes to groups of records can make this kind of collection maintenance practical without a large investment of time in manually re-cataloging individual records. The Metavus digital collections platform includes a BatchEdit plugin explicitly designed to support this sort of workflow. Records to modify are selected by adding them to a folder, either individually or by adding all the results from a search. For controlled vocabularies, BatchEdit can clear a field entirely, clear specific terms when present, or add specific terms. For fields that contain textual data (e.g., Paragraph, URL, Email, etc), BatchEdit can prepend data, append data, and perform find/replace operations. These operations can be applied in combination to quickly normalize records to follow a consistent set of standards.