Updating existing archival objects?

[Deleted user]

First - thank you so much for creating and continuing to expand the functionality of this importer! It's such a life saver.

Secondly, is it possible to use this importer to update existing archival objects, rather than create new instances of archival objects? I would like to append subject information to existing archival objects in bulk, and can't figure out a good way to do so. If not, is there any way to take existing archival objects, export the metadata fields required by the template, update the subject fields, then re-instantiate them after deleting the old archival objects?

Many thanks for your help!

[bobbi-SMR]

Hi! Thanks for the praise!

I'd love to see this plugin expand in this way -- you're not the first to ask for it -- but, when I was at Harvard, I was only tasked with extending this plugin according to Harvard's needs at the time.

Now that I'm freelance, while I have continued to provide support and fix the few bugs that have shown up, I can't do this work (it's a substantial amount of work!) without someone me for it.
(btw, I am doing some contract work for another university that includes added features to this plugin; when I'm finished, it will show up in this repository as well.)

I'm marking this issue as both "enhancement" and "help wanted", in case someone else who is monitoring this plugin wants to dive into either the export or expanded import.

[Deleted user]

Hi Bobbi,

Thanks so much for your speedy reply! I'm looking forward to the new added features.

As for updating existing archival objects, thank you for letting me know. I just thought I'd check to see if it was an option that I had missed while reading the user documentation, but completely understand that it would be quite an undertaking to add both the exporter and expand the importer. I'd be happy to hear if anyone monitoring this feed has come up with a solution in the meantime!

Thanks again for all your work on this.

Kindly,
Rana

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Rana Chan
Digital Assets and Rights Coordinator
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
rchan@okeeffemuseum.org

[Deleted user]

Just wanted to post an update in case anyone else runs into this issue: In our specific instance, we only wanted to append one subject to an existing archival object. I edited a script from Duke's repo, which I've found to be extremely helpful! The script I used is available here and could be modified for updating other archival object fields, as well. Hope this helps!