machineactionable_restriction_notes

Machine-Actionable Restriction Notes

Last updated on 02/13/2025 by Kylene Hutchinson.

Start Date	End Date	Contributors	Informed Stakeholders
11/12/2024	11/14/2024	Kylene Hutchinson	Alicia Detelich

Overview

Problem Statement

Some access restriction notes in ArchivesSpace contain dates in the free-text part of the note, but nothing in the structured date part of the note. In order to facilitate management of this data in ArchivesSpace and Aeon, we need to convert all free-text dates to structured dates.

Goals

• Identify all access restriction notes which have a date in the free-text field and no date in the structured field
• Add the date to the structured field

Background

Occasionally individuals forget to enter the structured data in the Access Restriction notes. This can cause issues with other systems, so we decided to identify and repair notes missing this structured data.

Process

See machineactionable_restriction_notes.py and 241114_update.csv

• Write a SQL query that grabs resources and archival objects with access restriction notes containing dates in the free text but no structured end date. Filter out notes that contain multiple dates as these need manual review.
• Save URIs from the SQL query in a csv
• Save backups of the URIs in a folder
• Check to ensure you are grabbing the correct note from the URI
• Use regexp to find a date pattern in the free text then convert it into a number format yyyy-mm-dd
• Add the end key to the rights_restriction dictionary using the converted date as the value.
• Save info about updates and errors to csv files.

Notes

Date	Highlight	Notes
11/12/2024	Started Project	Began investigating data and spoke to Alicia about potential complications with multiple dates in the free text
11/13/2024	Explored data	Records the total notes with this issues and details about them. Looked for any other complications besides multiple dates. Found abbreviated dates.
11/14/2024	Testing	Tested code in the Test Environment. Originally had complications with abbreviated dates and 'rights_restriction' dictionaries missing. Made some changes to the code and these updated smoothly. Only one came back with a 409, due to the fact it is locked from editing due to to being suppressed .
11/14/2024	Complete	Ran the code in Production with permission from Alicia. The 28 notes with 2 dates are a seperate project as these are likely dates that need to be transferred from parent to children.
02/05/2025	Update	Mary Caldera (head of the Archival Description Unit) reached out to mention a handful of collection level records had incorrect expiration dates. After reviewing it was revealed this was the result of inconsistant practices where on these records the archivist applied a note describing the restriction date of specific materials contained within. Temporarily the expiration date was removed for all collection, series, and subseries level records.
02/10/2025	Review	I sent a list of parent records for Mary to look over with my suggestions. There was less than 100 so it was simple to review. Mary made some edits to my suggestion and gave approval of which notes to add the dates back in, which to delete completely, and which to leave as.
02/13/2025	Complete	Records are now updated as suggested. In the future these record levels will need manual review.

Review

Data Details

• 509 total
  • 405 in repo 12
  • 90 in repo 11
  • 2 in repo 5
  • 5 in repo 4
  • 7 in repo 7
• 28 have more than 1 end date
  • 19 from repo 12
  • 4 from repo 7
  • 5 in repo 11
• 481 records that have only 1 date in every repo
  • 95 records not in repo 12
  • 386 in repo 12
    • 54 resources
    • 332 archival objects
  • 85 in repo 11
    • 30 resources
    • 55 archival objects
  • 2 in repo 5 (1 of each)
  • 5 in repo 4
    • 1 resource
    • 4 archival objects
  • 3 archival objects in repo 7

Communication

Name	Position	Notes
Alicia Detelich	Assistant Director of Special Collection Metadata Services	- Assigned Project -Approved Running Code in Production
Mary Caldera	Associate Director of Archival Description	- Requested some edits be made - Approved changes

Results

Ran in production without any issue. Free-Text dates were copied into Structured Data dates on Conditions Governing Access notes. Ran on 481 records throughout 5 repositories in ArchivesSpace. One record returned a 409, but that is because it is suppressed and cannot be edited. UPDATE: Removed the end dates to certain parent level records whose notes were describing the end dates of some of its contents.

References

• Github Issue: Add machine-actionable restrictions for RUs with free-text-only notes