I receive a spreadsheet with barcodes from Twila or Jenny.
I go through the list and remove any spaces, duplicates, and anything that isn't a barcode. These things can creep in during barcode scanning and cause problems further down the line, so I try to catch them upfront.
I open terminal window to navigate to appropriate file share, and create a new text file by copying and pasting the barcodes.
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I use a Perl script (barcode.pl) to run the text file through the Alma APIs to pull all of the necessary item information to populate Zasio, and another modified text file is created.
I then move the modified file to a folder in another file share where it can be accessed from Zasio.
I remote into Zasio server and import this modified file. This is a manual process that takes about 15 minutes because there are many formatting/configuration choices that have to be made. Not all imports are handled the same, as there are variations in the data, depending on the collection and/or originating location.
This process results in a table. I then run several queries on that table to check for duplicate barcodes that may already be in the database from previous imports. This usually results in two new lists of barcodes that have to be processed separately, duplicates and newbies.
Two new text files are created and run through the Alma APIs, as described above. They are then imported into the database as two new tables.
At this point, I kick everyone out of Zasio and make a back up of the database.
I run a special query against the newly created duplicates table, so that the barcode records already in the database are overwritten with the more current information.
Then, I run a different query on the table of new barcodes, to import these new records into the database.
Then, I log into the application and verify that the records were imported correctly.
Then, assuming there weren't issues, I let everyone know that they can get back in to Zasio.