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- Check the advisor field to insure there is only 1 advisor as it's unclear that 2 or more advisors will load correctly.
- Check the document type field to insure it's thesis or dissertation. Values converting are Ph.D., M.A., M.S. Macro can be revised to account for other values.
- Separate the keywords by semi-colons by changing commas in the keyword field to semicolons where appropriate. This may be most quickly achieved by finding and replacing the commas with semicolons's then manually changing the semicolons's back to commas's in the few places where you can readily identify coordinated keywords. This requires some judgment to determine where commas are separating keywords verses parts of the same keyword. For example, "University of Maryland, College Park," is likely one keyword and the comma should be a comma, and "Frederick, Maryland," is likely one keyword and the comma should be a comma (note that in other instances cities and states are separated and clearly not one keyword). However, more often than not, the commas are separating separate keywords and need to be semicolons: Antisocial, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Development, Gender, Marital quality, Relationship. This may require some judgment. For example, is American Jews, History, two separate keywords or one? Since history if such a broad topic, and unlikely to be a valuable keyword by itself, it might be best to interpret this as one keyword and leave the comma so that this is a single keyword. Also note that in some instances, whether the comma belongs or not may be determined which way it best fit the topic best based on the abstract, but this often doesn't work because subjects are often so technical it's impossible determine if the comma belongs or not without in-depth knowledge of the field. In case of doubt, change the comma making the words into separate keywords, as the knowledgeable searcher will be able to put the words together when searching. Note that the authors entering keywords are not skilled at this and some of the keywords aren't entered as library staff would enter them, and entries are inconsistent between authors. All the same, don't edit, and try to get the conversion of the commas correct without second-guessing or spending excessive time."
- Check the identifier to insure that the algorithm that draws the identifier from the file name is working correctly. If the file name formatting changes, the algorithm may stop working.
- Insure that the language is English.
Loading a set into ContentDM:
- Delete all extraneous information from the spreadsheet until it contains ContentDM field titles in the first row and the data, and nothing else.
- Save the Excel file as a .xlsm, or Macro-enabled workbook.
- Save the Excel file as a text tab delimited file. When you do this, Excel will warn you that Excel doesn't support saving multiple-page worksheets as a text file and only the active page will be saved. So long as you're on the page with the data, this is ok. Excel will also warn you that the format doesn't support all of the features, and this is ok too. Just be sure to save with a different file name to insure that you still have a template to work with later.
- Close Excel and open the tab-delimited text file. Find and replace all " with nothing. Re-save the file. Note that if Excel is still open, the edited .txt file won't save.
- Open ContentDM. If you want to watch the upload progress, click "View Upload Manager." Click "Add Multiple Items." Select your text metadata file. Click next and select the folder with the PDF's and click next. Keep clicking next until you get to the "Multiple Items--Map Metadata Fields" screen. The left and right columns should match except for the last field. If they don't, you did something wrong and need to go back and insure that you have a .txt file with the column headings in the first line. Click "Next" again, then click "Add Items." Either it will begin uploading or you'll get an error. If you get an error, the contents of your txt metadata file don't match the contents of the folder with the pdf files. Go back and fix. If everything goes right, it will begin uploading, the number of files being uploaded will match the number of files you were trying to upload. Then wait a very long time. If everything goes correctly, you'll see a message saying how many files were added. This should again match how many you were trying to add.
- If everything uploaded correctly, the project will open behind the add message. Close the message screen, and use the project screen to edit each file by double-clicking it. Once you have a file open, you can navigate to the next by using the "Save and Back" or "Save and Next" buttons, or by closing the edit screen and returning the project tab (it will prompt you to save). In each ETD, change the thumbnail by clicking "Replace Thumbnail" and then click "Autogenerate." In each ETD, select a department from the department list.
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