Agents

Using the Arctos agent lookup

Use the file ARCTOS-Lookup-Master_Agent to process raw spreadsheet data and check for errors in OpenRefine. The lookup should either return (a) a valid Arctos preferred name; (b) "PLACEHOLDER" which means you need to check for initials, multiple agents, or other ambiguity; (c) "AMBIGUOUS" which requires further research; or (d) nothing, which means that either the name is too vague to be an agent (e.g. "native") or we do not have the name in our lookup. In the case of the latter, check Arctos directly and create a new agent if necessary.

All agents (collector, donor, preparator, etc.) need to be checked for ambiguous initials prior to cross-referencing with the Arctos Agent Lookup. Often, initials make sense in the context of the collection, e.g. "H.K.G." is "Howard K. Gloyd" in herpetology, but return "AMBIGUOUS" in the lookup.

Push the Arctos preferred names into bulkloader fields that map to agents. Retain the original agent names in an attribute of type "verbatim collector."

Cleaning up agents that CHAS added to Arctos

When we bulk created agents in Arctos we purposely did not resolve all potentially matching agent names. For example, we did not initially map "H. K. Gloyd" to "Howard K. Gloyd" because depending on the context it may occasionally also refer to "Helen K. Gloyd."

If you see multiple agents in Arctos that you believe refer to the same individual, double check their agent activity reports and then mark one as a "bad duplicate" of the other. All of our agents were bulkloaded by Dusty L. McDonald on 2015-10-06; this information can be a useful flag for agents you are suspicious of.