Orbis Cascade Alliance

Content Creation &

Dissemination Program
Digital Collections Service

Batch Editing Omeka Records

Produced by the Digital Collections Working Group of the Content Creation & Dissemination Team
Janet Hauck, Whitworth University (chair)
Anneliese Dehner, Metadata Applications Librarian, Alliance (author of this document)
Laura Zeigen, Oregon Health & Sciences University
Julia Simic, University of Oregon
Theodore Gerontakos, University of Washington
Jodi Allison-Bunnell, Alliance (ex officio)

Version 1.0, March 2017

Table of Contents
Overview

Requirements

Batch export

Cleanup exported data

Prepare for batch import

Batch Import

Overview
This document is intended to guide Alliance Omeka users through the process of batch exporting a .csv
file of metadata, cleaning up that metadata, and then batch importing it back into Omeka. The batch
processes, described in this document, use Anneliese Dehner’s ​CSV Export plugin​ and Daniel Berthereau’s
CSV Import+ plugin​. When an Omeka record is edited with this batch import process, the existing
reference URL and record ID for an item remain unchanged.

Requirements
Omeka version: 2.2.2 - 2.4.1
Batch export

CSV Export plugin

Install plugin
To export a batch of Omeka item records, first install the ​CSV Export plugin​ by clicking on the green
“Clone or download” button to “Download Zip”. Refer to Omeka’s Installing Plugins and Themes
screencast​ and ​written documentation​ for step-by-step instructions on installing Omeka plugins.

Configure plugin
The CSV Export plugin exports a batch of Omeka item records as a .csv file. By default, the plugin exports
all Dublin Core metadata, contained in these records.

Export

Export all item records in the Omeka repository

To export all item records in your Omeka repository, follow the steps below:

1. Login to your Omeka dashboard.

2. Click on “CSV Export” in the left sidebar, and the CSV Export page will open.

3. Click the “Export all data as CSV” button, and a .csv file of item records will download to your
desktop.

4. Make a copy of the .csv file as a backup, “just in case.” Name the copy whatever you like.

Export a subset of your Omeka item records

To export a subset of your Omeka item records, follow the steps below:

1. Login to your Omeka dashboard.

2. Use the dashboard’s Advanced Search form* to define a subset of item records (eg. a single
collection’s item records).
 3. The subset of item records will be listed in a Browse Items page like the screenshot below. When
you have the subset you want, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Export results as
CSV” button. A .csv file of item records will download to your desktop.

4. Make a copy of the .csv file as a backup, “just in case.” Name the copy whatever you like.

* Browsing, by clicking “Tags” or “Collections” in the left sidebar, and filtering (with a Quick Filter) will
not work as expected. To define a subset of item records for batch export, you must search via the
advanced search form.

Cleanup exported data

Please consider the steps below as you clean up the data in your exported CSV file.
 1. Import your CSV file into OpenRefine or Google Sheets:

● Google Sheets: Refer to ​Import data sets & spreadsheets documentation​ for more
information.

● OpenRefine: Refer to “OpenRefine Metadata Cleanup” in A​ lliance Digital Collections

Documentation​ for information about using OpenRefine.

2. Your data will be arranged in tabular format, one column for each Omeka field and one row for
each record. You can safely remove the columns of data that you won’t be cleaning up. ​You must
not delete the ‘id’ column however​. The data in this column is required for the batch import
process.

​ lliance Dublin Core Best Practices Guidelines​.

3. Edit your data to be compliant with the A

Prepare for batch import

CSV Import+ plugin

This plugin is different from Omeka’s original CSV Import plugin, because it allows you to batch edit
metadata in Omeka records. The import process imports a CSV file, containing edited Omeka metadata,
then overlays the existing Omeka metadata. When an Omeka record is edited with this batch import
process, the existing reference URL and record ID for an item remain unchanged.

This version of the CSV Import plugin can be installed alongside the original CSV import plugin without
conflict.

Install plugin
To import a batch of Omeka item records, first install the ​CSV Import+ plugin​ (Click on the green “Clone
or download” button to “Download Zip”). Refer to Omeka’s Installing Plugins and Themes ​screencast​ and
written documentation​ for step-by-step instructions on installing Omeka plugins.
Configure plugin
To configure the CSV Import+ plugin, follow the configuration steps in the “Installation” section of the
plugin’s ​Readme.md page​.

Prepare your CSV import file

The CSV import file must include three values in every row to import successfully and overlay your
existing Omeka metadata. These values are: id, Action, and Record Type. Follow the steps below to ensure
your CSV import file contains these values:

1. Open your .csv file in Google Sheets, and you should see a column with the header “id”.

2. Create 2 new columns in your spreadsheet:

● 1st: Add the column header “Action”, then fill the cells below this header with “Replace”.

● 2nd: Add the column header “Record Type”, then fill the cells below this header with
“Item”.

3. The remaining columns in your spreadsheet contain your metadata values. To enable automatic
field mapping during the batch import process, add “Dublin Core:” before each field name (eg.
Title becomes Dublin Core:Title).

4. Double check that your populated CSV import file resembles the spreadsheet below:

Batch Import
Use your CSV import file to batch edit fields in Omeka records. Follow the steps below to batch edit:
1. Login to your Omeka dashboard.

2. Click on “CSV Import+” in the left sidebar, and the CSV Import+ page will open.

3. Click “Choose file” to browse for your CSV import file and select it for upload.

4. From the “Column delimiter” drop down menu, select “comma”.

5. From the “Enclosure” drop down menu, select ‘“ (double quote)’.

6. From the “Element delimiter” drop down menu, select “semi-colon”.

7. If the records in your .csv file belong to one collection, select the collection name from
“Collection” drop down menu.

8. Check the box to the right of “Make records public”. Otherwise your records will be set as private
during the import process.

9. From the “Identifier field (required)” drop down menu, select “Internal id”.

10. From the “Action” drop down menu, select “Update values of specific fields”.

11. From the “Contains extra data” drop down menu, select “Perhaps, so the mapping should be done
manually”.

12. Click the green “Next” button, and a mapping page called “Step 2: Map columns to elements, tags,
or files” will open.
13. Some of the Dublin Core fields in your .csv file may map to Omeka fields automatically. If they do
not map automatically, map them here by selecting the appropriate fields from the “Map to
Element” column in the mapping table.

14. For the “Action” values in your .csv file, select “Action” from the “Special values” column in the
mapping table.

15. For the “Record Type” values in your .csv file, select “Record Type” from the “Special values”
column in the mapping table.

16. For the “id” values in your .csv file, select “Identifier” from the “Special values” column in the
mapping table.

17. For “Collection Name” in your .csv file, select “Collection (for items)” from the “Special values”
column in the mapping table.

18. Click the green “Import CSV file” button, and the Status page will open. When your import job
reads “Completed” in the “Status” column, your import is done.