How to edit multiple records

Good morning,

I've been able to use 'Change Heading - Query Set' tool to add/remove subject headings from certain lists of books, it really comes in handy for some of them. But is there any way to change multiple books to fiction or non-fiction all at once?

Thanks!

Great question! I'm glad the new Change Heading - Query Set tool has been useful for you. Unfortunately, at this time, we do not have a way to bulk update the fiction checkbox.

If that's something you find yourself wanting frequently, or if others reading this would find it useful as well, let me know and I'll take it to the development team.

At Wolfner, a lot of the oldest books in our collection are backwards in regards to the fiction box (fiction books are unchecked, nonfiction books are checked). A way to update more than one title at a time would be great! Right now, we have to update them one-a- a-time as we locate these issue titles, which are often located when we are examining exported queries.

How did you go about finding the books that the check box was wrong? Was it a report or query that listed the books so you could go in and correct each one? What kind of report or query did you do?

Every time we've located books with this issue, we had exported a query on a subject we were searching for for a different reason. In the process of examining results, we noticed that we had a lot of books that had either accurate fiction or nonfiction subject codes applied, but the column in that Excel file for "Fiction" that would contain "true" for fiction and "false" for nonfiction had those two words in reverse. I'm not sure there is a good query to pull to locate all books where the issue may be present.

We've also found books with the issue outside of queries, mainly when we've been looking at a record to add subject codes to books that previously contained no subject codes. Again, these were mostly older titles that had been converted from cassette.

We did it similar to acnickless. Excel has been useful in locating them all. We've started by just pulling a query of all the books that were marked juvenile and non fiction then using formulas to find the books that had contradicting subject headings to non fiction.

If you want to do a query specifically to find books, you can query against the checkbox on the advanced tab, using:
BibRec | Fiction | Equals | true (for checked, or false for unchecked)

So to find non-fiction books that are marked fiction, you could do a query for:
(Basic) Subject | Matches | Non-Fiction
(Advanced) BibRec | Fiction | Equals | True

The other way around is a little trickier because "Matches | Fiction" will find all of your Non-Fiction books, since the keyword is included. For those, you'd need to use "Equals | Adult Fiction" (or Juvenile Fiction, or another complete subject)

If you run these queries, post the results! That'll let us know the scale of what you're dealing with.

Here's a sampling of my results from four of our most-used subject codes:

Biography results: 270 titles
History results: 220 titles
Mystery: 1,723 titles
Romance: 684 titles

I spot checked the results, but obviously could not take the time to go through every title to double-check if the box is checked or not.

To clarify, that's Biographies marked as Fiction, History titles marked Fiction, Mysteries marked as Non-Fiction, and Romances marked as Non-Fiction, correct?

Correct.

I did this query and got 7 books that had the check mark on them? would this be right?

So to find non-fiction books that are marked fiction, you could do a query for:
(Basic) Subject | Matches | Non-Fiction
(Advanced) BibRec | Fiction | Equals | True

KlasID Title Author CallNum
DB031560 The Dead Sea cipher Peters, Elizabeth. 813.54 AFI
DB062856 Gate of the sun: Bab al-Shams KhÅrÄ, IlyÄs. 892.736 AFI
DB066867 Once upon a time (she said) Yolen, Jane. 813.0876 AFI
DB068081 De Niro's game Hage, Rawi. 823.92 AFI
DB078325 An unnecessary woman Alameddine, Rabih. 813.54 AFI
DB081453 Miracle at Augusta Patterson, James. 813.54 AFI
DB091645 The occasional virgin Shaykh, Hanan 892.736 AFI

Hi all,
A quick check to make sure we're on the same page. As far as I can tell, there is ONLY a Fiction check box on the Bib rec. There ISN'T a Non-fiction check box.This means in order to determine Non-fiction versus Fiction how you construct the query depends on what you are looking for. In order to find "non-fiction" you would need to from the Advanced tab for the query you would choose Bib Rec and make sure to indicate for Fiction that it equals false or no. To find Fiction that it equals true or yes.
Correct if I'm mistaken and you are pulling this information from somewhere else.

NC-Craig wrote: Hi all,
A quick check to make sure we're on the same page. As far as I can tell, there is ONLY a Fiction check box on the Bib rec. There ISN'T a Non-fiction check box.This means in order to determine Non-fiction versus Fiction how you construct the query depends on what you are looking for. In order to find "non-fiction" you would need to from the Advanced tab for the query you would choose Bib Rec and make sure to indicate for Fiction that it equals false or no. To find Fiction that it equals true or yes.
Correct if I'm mistaken and you are pulling this information from somewhere else.

That is correct! An un-checked Fiction box is presumed to mean Non-Fiction.

constance wrote: I did this query and got 7 books that had the check mark on them? would this be right?

So to find non-fiction books that are marked fiction, you could do a query for:
(Basic) Subject | Matches | Non-Fiction
(Advanced) BibRec | Fiction | Equals | True

KlasID Title Author CallNum
DB031560 The Dead Sea cipher Peters, Elizabeth. 813.54 AFI
DB062856 Gate of the sun: Bab al-Shams KhÅrÄ, IlyÄs. 892.736 AFI
DB066867 Once upon a time (she said) Yolen, Jane. 813.0876 AFI
DB068081 De Niro's game Hage, Rawi. 823.92 AFI
DB078325 An unnecessary woman Alameddine, Rabih. 813.54 AFI
DB081453 Miracle at Augusta Patterson, James. 813.54 AFI
DB091645 The occasional virgin Shaykh, Hanan 892.736 AFI

Since you got a nice, manageable number, I'd recommend taking a look at them one-by-one. At a glance, it looks like these ones (or at least most) are correctly marked Fiction, so you'd want to look at what "Non-Fiction" subject is applied, as that is probably the part that needs correcting.

This is a good note to remember that not every Subject/Fiction Box mis-match means that the box is set incorrectly!

Is there a way to change the status of multiple DBs from Active to Download Only? In our OPAC, when we have physical titles, it shows as "Hard Copies Out," but when we have 0 copies (most likely withdrawn or NAC), it shows up in our OPAC as Active.

Lisa, there is not a way to change the Status of records in bulk. For your specific issue, though, Customer Support can help you tweak the wording on the WebOPAC ("Hard Copies Out," etc) to be more clear.

I recommend that you send us an email with the OPAC messages you want to change, and what you'd like them to say (Download Only, Contact Library to Order, etc). We'll work with you to get things worded better for your patrons.