How to Change the Type of an Entity

It may happen that in either manual cataloguing or automated data processing an entity is given the wrong type, for example a corporate body could have been marked as a place or similar). If you come across such a case it is necessary to correct the CT entry accordingly. However, this cannot be done simply by changing the entity type setting in the form-based editor, since this is taken into account only for new records - once a record has been saved and given an id, the value of the entity type field is being ignored.

To change the entity type for an entry it is necessary to create a new record first and then redirect the old/wrong one to the new one.

For example:

In this example the corporate entity “Mathematisches Institut der Universität Hamburg” has erroneously been identified as a place, although it is rather a section of a corporate body. To create a new cnc-record for that entity and redirect the old id to that new record follow these steps:

1. From the result set open the full record in a new browser tab (right-click and choose “Open in new tab”) - you will need to go back to the result set later and open the record a second time, so working with multiple browser tabs is a good option.

2. Copy the current record id to your clipboard (select the id, right-click and “copy” or CTRL+C - just like you copy&paste things in Word)

3. Make a copy of the record by clicking the middle icon in the editing bar at the bottom of the record.

4. In that copy change the heading type if necessary (in most cases this should probably be “default”) and

5. set the entity type (in this example to “Corporate Body”).

6. Paste also the old record identifier into the “old/obsolete CT identifier” field

7. If there is more to edit do this as well (e.g. add a place of activity, a related corporate body, dates of existence etc)

8. Save the record

9. Copy the new record id from the record and go back to your search results in the other tab.

10. Open the other record (the wrong one) and

11. when in full display, open the record for editing (the left icon in the editing bar at the bottom) and choose the internal Format editor.

12. Add a new field 990 at the bottom of the record (or anywhere else, it actually doesn't matter where in the record this field is added) with two blank indicator positions and a subfield $a and

13. copy the record id of the new record into that subfield $a and hit save.

That's all if there are no other records that link to old/wrong record. If there are, you'll need to edit them too and adjust the type of relationship (for example move the link from “place of activity” to “related entry” or whatever is necessary) - there is strictly speaking no need to change the record id in the links, though.