Bulk Metadata Editor (plugin for Omeka)

Bulk Metadata Editor is an Omeka plugin intended to expedite the process of editing metadata in Omeka collections of digital objects by providing tools for administrators to edit many Items at once based on prespecified rules.

If you use this plugin, please take a moment to submit feedback about your experience, so we can keep making Omeka better: User Survey.

The editing options available are:

Search and replace text
Add a new metadatum in the selected field
Prepend text to existing metadata in the selected fields
Append text to existing metadata in the selected fields
Remove text from ends of existing metadata in the selected fields
Convert to uppercase or lowercase existing metadata in the selected fields
Explode metadata with a separator in multiple elements in the selected fields
Deduplicate and join metadata in the selected fields
Deduplicate and remove empty metadata in the selected fields
Deduplicate files of selected items by hash
Delete all existing metadata in the selected fields
Copy/Move content from the selected field to another

Installation

Uncompress files and rename plugin folder "BulkMetadataEditor".

Then install it like any other Omeka plugin.

You may have to set the php cli path in application/config/config.ini, according to your server if it is not automatically detected:

background.php.path = "/usr/bin/php-cli"

In order to get messages about the process, you may have to set the logger:

log.errors = true
log.priority = Zend_Log::INFO

The log file is application/logs/errors.log, that must be writeable.

Notes

After a successful process, records must be reindexed in order to find them via the quick search field.
The change "Append text to existing metadata in the selected fields" appends text only if there is already a metadata.
The preview may fail when there is a lot of fields or changes to prepare. The true process will still work fine even with a huge number of items and fields, because it is done in the background, without the limit set by the server. Nevertheless, it's recommended to avoid too large updates.

Warning

Use it at your own risk.

It's always recommended to backup your files and your databases and to check your archives regularly so you can roll back if needed.

Troubleshooting

See online issues on the plugin issues page on GitHub.

License

This plugin is published under GNU/GPL v3.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

UCSCLibrary / BulkMetadataEditor