Bug 18583

Summary: Add the ability to merge multiple authorities
Product: Koha Reporter: Nick Clemens (kidclamp) <nick>
Component: CatalogingAssignee: Marcel de Rooy <m.de.rooy>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact: Testopia <testopia>
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P5 - low CC: abales, aholt, dcook, flyingendpaper, koha, m.de.rooy, marjorie.barry-vila, phil, r.j.wijlens, rkuiper, slmontesdeoca, thaycock
Version: Main   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
GIT URL: Change sponsored?: ---
Patch complexity: --- Documentation contact:
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Description Nick Clemens (kidclamp) 2017-05-11 15:43:49 UTC
Since bug 8064 it is possible to merge multiple bibliographic records at once, it would be nice to be able to do the same thing with authority records.
Comment 1 Marjorie Barry-Vila 2019-02-28 13:52:49 UTC
+1
Comment 2 Ronald Wijlens 2020-02-20 11:33:34 UTC
Agreed. We have many duplicate authority records dating back from the original conversion, with some duplicates appearing over 50 times. Manually merging them in pairs takes forever.
Comment 3 Rhonda Kuiper 2020-08-18 18:24:55 UTC
This would be a wonderful time-saving tool for our catalogers.
Comment 4 Amber Bales 2022-09-28 20:32:35 UTC
Agreed, this would be a great tool for catalogers.
Comment 5 Katrin Fischer 2023-09-15 20:50:24 UTC
Still valid.
Comment 6 Angela Berrett 2024-06-03 19:00:49 UTC
+1
Comment 7 Phil Ringnalda 2025-02-05 01:38:04 UTC
*** Bug 39037 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 8 slmontesdeoca 2025-02-05 15:41:52 UTC
I would love to see this development! At my library we come across this problem whenever we're looking to merge authorities. Many times there are more than just 2 authorities we want to merge together, and it's a painstaking process when we can only do 2 at a time.
Comment 9 Owen Leonard 2025-02-18 17:36:29 UTC
One of the good things about the current method of selecting authority records for merging is that you can select one record, click to a different page of results, and then select the second record. Is this functionality what we would want to extend for batch operations?

The other option is to add checkboxes to authority search results and offer batch operations like we do in bibliographic search results. This is limited to selections on the current page.

I'm inclined to do the latter since one would be likely to be merging records which came up together in search results. It would be possible to offer both options but I'm concerned that having both would be confusing.
Comment 10 Phil Ringnalda 2025-02-18 20:23:41 UTC
It's rather confusing UI (and code, the last time I came near it), but there is a third option: the accumulating checkboxes of Item search, where you can pick two on the first page, five on the second, all twenty on the 2356th page. And once you're to the point of merging authority records, you've pretty much gotten over being intimidated by complex and unclear UI.

I wouldn't want to lose the current merge-two UI, though, because at least once every couple of weeks I need to merge two things that cannot be found in one search, much less put on one page (short of editing both to add a unique string).