Text Authorities

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pbirvine's picture

In reviewing the 1892 Episcopal Hymnal, I find that many texts have inoperative links due to an authority in which a -1 or -2 or -3 has been added needlessly. When I delete the hyphen and number, the authority becomes operative, leading me to a page that often includes the entire hymn text. What causes the system to add these unnecessary and misleading numbers, and is there a way to eliminate them without individually editing each and every text? I also wonder why such records do not appear as unconnected texts, as that is exactly what they are. Peter


Comments

A number gets added to an authority when the "text" of the authority duplicates an existing authority in the database. The number necesary to make the authority unique and is added automaticaly. In the process of merging text authorities these added numbers get changed and eliminated when they are no longer necessary. Likewise, authorities are being cleaned up and changed from something like "all_ye_that_who_love_the_lord_rejoice" to "all_ye_that_love_the_lord_rejoice"

Probably what happened with this hymnal is that between when the hymnal was downloaded as a spreadsheet and when it was uploaded back in, many of the text authority ids had changed. They don't appear as unconnected texts because there is an authority in the authority id field of the spreadsheet. However, the authority id may have changed since the spreadsheet was downloaded so it no longer links to an existing authority in the database.

For now, the thing for editors to do is to check all the authority links after a hymnal is uploaded to make sure they are linking to the proper authority.