DevConnect Agenda

Virtual community series
Starting April 2025

Thursday, April 10, 2025

In response to organizational restructuring, West Virginia University's Metadata Unit streamlined quality control workflows for a more distributed team of cataloging staff by running python scripts on raw MARC delivered by a query collection. The scripts deliver a count of each cataloger's new and edited bibliographic and holdings records, and provide a selection of fields relevant to their current projects in a spreadsheet that can be easily reviewed and used to assign manual corrections. API calls to execute corrections could also be integrated easily into these scripts. I will provide line by line explanation of code, which uses pandas, pymarc, and SQLite in a Google Colab environment on data accessible to any WorldShare Management Services (WMS) subscriber, and I will reflect on how the scripts assisted with change management during a large, organizational transition.

Thursday, April 24, 2025

Several OCLC APIs offer endpoints for updating records. This talk will describe a general strategy for updating pre-identified batches of records using these APIs via Python, focusing on two use-cases: patron records and local holdings records. In both cases, Larry will explain why alternative bulk update methods -- using patron data files via FTP or Record Manager's bulk actions for LHRs -- might be enough for most scenarios, but not for all, and why the added flexibility of a general-purpose programming language might be what you want in some cases.