Feature Request - verbatim agents in transactions

[Jegelewicz]

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from https://github.com/ArctosDB/data-migration/issues/1531#issuecomment-1562030971

I have party/contact names for the accessions provided by the Burke registrar, but no other information to agentify them (if not already agentified). Presumably the registrar has additional information (address, phone number, etc), but it's very difficult to export data from the Argus database they use to manage it. So, I have a couple questions:

• It seems like the "received from" field for accessions requires an agent name, not a verbatim name. Is that correct? and If yes, then--
• If I have a name, which represents a person that will be associated with an accession when those are bulkloaded, is it OK to agentify people without additional information? It's also possible we may be able to add info in the future if provided by the reg office (or if she wants to add it herself!).
• And if that's not possible/not good practice, then should I just hold off on associating these names with accessions and worry about it later? ;)

See also - #6114

This would allow us to remove a lot of low-quality agents, making the process of reviewing agents for incoming collections less difficult.

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Faithfully record the information one has without creating low data agents

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This is part of our next level of agent clean up! Can we add a place for verbatim agents in transactions, then propose a cleanup to verbatimize all transaction agents without proper credentials?

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from https://github.com/ArctosDB/data-migration/issues/1531#issuecomment-1563053008

I have gotten in the habit of recording "Received by unknown" for accessions donated by a person who doesn't deserve to be an agent (eg if their only activity will be donating a salvaged or inherited mammal specimen) regardless of whether we have their address or other info. I include their name in the accession remarks, so we have that, but I do not create agents for them. Verbatim agent would be an improvement, I think.
I also assume donors might want to stay anonymous, or at least not in the (semi-public?) agents table, so I don't create agents for them unless I have some reason to assume they would not mind being associated with those specimens.

Bold added by @Jegelewicz

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[dustymc]

Longer-term, transactions could probably benefit from Attributes (and maybe a complete model review while we're in there) - that would accommodate this, and hopefully whatever else comes along.

Until then, and I think particularly as this is probably happening mostly in fairly systematic ways (eg migrations), doing something predictable in some predictable place should be easily recoverable.

[agentname = role],[agentname=role] or something in the above-mentioned remarks should work be recoverable, be somewhat searchable, but would require some eventual cleanup.

Attaching Excel or CSV or whatever as Media would avoid the need for any cleanup of the data, would be easily recoverable without scripts or digging, but would not be searchable.

I'm happy to help, review to make sure I can actually extract data, or whatever is necessary until a real solution can be found.

[KatherineLAnderson]

[agentname = role],[agentname=role] or something in the above-mentioned remarks should work be recoverable, be somewhat searchable, but would require some eventual cleanup.

@dustymc Clarification question before I do a dumb thing:
For multiple agents, should each be listed in their own set of brackets within the remarks field? And separated by a comma? E.g., [John Smith=received from],[Jane Smith=received from]

(tag @WaigePilson because I think this is also relevant for you.)

[dustymc]

@KatherineLAnderson yep that pattern looks good.

[Jegelewicz]

Suggest we close this