Use Universal import to update existing records
KeskusteluRecommend Site Improvements
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1tl.gould
Hello - apologies if this has already been raised before (or indeed, if I'm missing something obvious with existing functions - have tried a couple of times with limited success).
Coming back to my LibraryThing catalogue after a while and would like to do some cleanup/retrospective cataloguing of the books I have added over the years (e.g add dimensions to books where this is missing, amend primary author information where the import has given an odd result, add ratings, add acquisition dates and locations).
I've done an export of my collection into a CSV file and can see there is a Book Id for which refers to my copy of a book (e.g 237608758 is the Id for my copy of this book: https://www.librarything.com/work/30022415).
So, my thinking was that I could update the fields in the CSV, run that through the import and the fields for my copy of the book would be updated with the information I have added or updated. However, it doesnt seem that the import is able to handle this, as when I try, the information from the CSV isn't added to the record.
This is likely a niche request, but it would be amazing if the importer could see that I want to update an existing record using that Book Id number, and then pass that data into the record, rather than refetching the catalogue data from OverCat etc. Of course, I can just update each record one at a time, but doing additions from an export means that cleanup tasks can be completed much faster (e.g find all books in a particular series and automatically fill common info like height and length, or standardise the list of places where I've bought books from).
Coming back to my LibraryThing catalogue after a while and would like to do some cleanup/retrospective cataloguing of the books I have added over the years (e.g add dimensions to books where this is missing, amend primary author information where the import has given an odd result, add ratings, add acquisition dates and locations).
I've done an export of my collection into a CSV file and can see there is a Book Id for which refers to my copy of a book (e.g 237608758 is the Id for my copy of this book: https://www.librarything.com/work/30022415).
So, my thinking was that I could update the fields in the CSV, run that through the import and the fields for my copy of the book would be updated with the information I have added or updated. However, it doesnt seem that the import is able to handle this, as when I try, the information from the CSV isn't added to the record.
This is likely a niche request, but it would be amazing if the importer could see that I want to update an existing record using that Book Id number, and then pass that data into the record, rather than refetching the catalogue data from OverCat etc. Of course, I can just update each record one at a time, but doing additions from an export means that cleanup tasks can be completed much faster (e.g find all books in a particular series and automatically fill common info like height and length, or standardise the list of places where I've bought books from).
3lorax
This has been requested for approximately forever, please see https://www.librarything.com/topic/219575
