We needed a way to "clone" certain pieces of data from a Fedora Object to help in the creation of a new object. Namely, we wanted to be able to fill in the MODS form for a record during the ingest phase so only certain elements could be modified and set to ingest as a new record. The functionality would be immensely useful because a MODS form can consist of a very large number of elements (multiple contributors, subject chains, sources means a lot of data entry for one record) and mostly similar data with only a few changes between mean that it can take up a lot of the content editor's time.
In Drupal, there is a module named
Node Clone which allows you to create a copy of a node and then edit it as needed. We used that as inspiration for how we wanted the intended workflow to be.
And with that, we're happy to formally announce the
Islandora Record Template Seed module!
Getting Started
When the module is enabled, you will see an option to clone/seed the record once you are on a given node.
After you click on
Clone/Seed Template, you will fill in any pre-steps for the record (such the content model, etc) and once you get to the mods form, all the mods elements from the record you were just all will be pre-filled, ready for you to edit as needed.
If you want to ensure that certain mods elements are not pre-filled (this might be usable for elements like the title, or resource id, to name a few). You can also set those at
[URL]/admin/islandora/islandora-record-template-seed and you are presented with a set of select form elements on which looks like the following:
When you go back to create the record from a template seed, the title field will be empty, requiring the user to pre-fill it beforehand.
If you are using Islandora and looking for easier ways to create records based on existing fedora objects, give the module a try! And please use the issue queue if you encounter any bugs or have ideas on how to make it better.