Author Missing from Book Merge

APAC
Merging 2 titles in the same catalogue.
Title 1 has Title and ISBN but no author. Date Added is 2016
Title 2 has Title, Author(s) and ISBN and other data. Date Added is 2022

I want to keep the original date added date.
If I make Title 1 the Master item, the original Date Added Date is kept BUT the Author(s) go missing when merged.
If I make Title 2 the Master item, the Author(s) are kept but the original Date Added date is lost.
The easiest fix I believe is to merge Author(s) or Date Added Date in the same manner that other data can be selected via individual drop down lists.
Alternatively always keep the Author data if it is missing from either of the 2 Titles and I can then choose which to make the Master in order to keep the preferred Date Added date or always keep the original/earliest Date Added date.
  • dstillman
    edited July 26, 2022
    It will always keep the earliest Date Added of all the items, since that's when the item was first added to your library.

    There's no good way to allow creator merging, so the creators are just a function of the master item you choose (and there's some reason to think that the item with the best creators is going to have the best data in general). All other fields can be individually overridden if necessary.
  • APAC
    @dstillman Thank you for your timely reply.

    I must be going blind in my old age if I had know that the earliest Date Added date is always retained I would not have raised this note.

    Following your advice I tried it out and it works as you described. I don't know why I thought the earlier date was going missing. Possibly two very similar titles and my eye was alighting on another entry in the list that was previously added from scratch. That or I really loosing my mental faculties.

    Thanks again.

  • APAC
    edited July 27, 2022
    @dstillman
    OK Definitely something strange happening here. I just updated another entry by merging new data with old and this time the original record which was Date Added 30/3/2016 is now Date Added 27/07/2022. I used the later record as the master as it had the Author data that was missing from the original.

    The only thing I can see that is different between both merges is that:

    In the 1st test the original record had a single ISBN number and the new record to be merged had the same single ISBN.

    In the 2nd test the original record had a single ISBN number but the new record to be merged had 2 ISBN's one an exact match to the original and 1 other.

    I carefully checked the Date Added date in both the Collections Panel list view and in the Item Pane.

    I was able to restore the original date by resurrecting the old record from the trash, manually adding the Author and re-merging with the old record as the master.

    Having to manually add the author to the original record prior to doing the merge is tiresome as I have a few hundred to do.

    OK I think I have the use case where the problem occurs. Merge 3 items at once.

    Thanks again
    Martin

    PS I also notice that the Zotero/Crome connector is importing Subject tags from Google Books but Not WorldCat and it fails to import Book data from Trove (eg https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/7388561) attempts to import as Webpage snapshot then fails to finish. I have to refresh the web page to get the Zotero popup to close.
  • dstillman
    I'm not seeing this, even with three items.

    If you think you can reproduce this, can you provide a Debug ID for doing so, along with the dates in question?
  • APAC
    edited July 28, 2022
    @dstillman

    I have a bunch of screenshots of this merge but unfortunately for error discovery purposes this one worked as expected. ie Gave the result I wanted.

    [remove irrelevant output — D.S.]

    Prior to reloading Zot with debugging enabled I had ensured that I had the latest PC (Linux) version available and Checked the Chrome extension for the latest version.

    I hope I haven't led you on a wild goose chase but I'll leave the debug switched on and if I see it happen again I'll grab the relevant part of the log and add it to this comment.
    Thanks so much.
  • dstillman
    edited July 28, 2022
    To be clear, we'd need a Debug ID from Zotero for an operation where this happened. You pasted in raw error output (rather than a Debug ID) from the Zotero Connector (rather than Zotero) for this not happening (rather than happening). You can always leave the debug output window open and click Clear just before performing a merge.
  • APAC
    It just occurred with this title "The Forbidden Hills" time approx 2022-07-28-16:42:53 AEST.
    Sorry I realised after I added the prev error it was from the browser connector not the pc app.

    Debug ID = D1982836163
  • dstillman
    edited July 28, 2022
    OK, and what went wrong? You now have an item in your library with a Date Added of "2016-03-30 12:22:35" and two items in the trash with "2016-03-30 12:22:35" and "2022-07-28 06:41:09". The debug output shows "2016-03-30 12:22:35" being applied to an item with a Date Added of "2022-07-28 01:13:23".
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