Cookbook: Analyzing the values in a CONTENTdm collection's fields to prepare for using metadata manipulators

Even though MIK's metadata manipulators can fix problems with metadata during the creation of Islandora import packages, it doesn't provide any tools for analyzing your metadata. However, staff at Simon Fraser University Library have created a tool called the CONTENTdm Collection Inspector that provides a report of all the unique values in a specific field in a specific CONTENTdm collection. You can use this tool to find out how many dates are not in YYYY-MM-DD format, for example, or to see if there are any variations in how names, keywords, or other values exist in the CONTENTdm metadata. You can then use MIK's metadata manipulators or field mappings to fix those problems.

For example, to generate the list of unique values in a field, run the following command (where the values of --nickname and --alias are specific to the field and collection, respectively):

php cdminspect --inspect=field_values --nickname=bands --alias=vanpunk

Running this command to get a list of all the unique values from the 'bands' field ('bands' is the nickname, to the right of the human-readable field name 'Bands') for the Vancouver Punk Rock Collection.

A sample of the output from this particular command is:

The Diefenbakers
The Dijits
The Dils
The Dinnettes
The Dishrags
The Dragons
The Droogs
Thee Atoms
The Eddy Dutchman Jazz Trio
The Edsells
The Enemy
The Enigmas
The Escorts
The Evaporators
The Exploited
The Explosions
The Fabulous Wallies
The Fabulous Wallys
The Fartz
The Fastbacks
The Feederz

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