Allow Super Librarians to quickly move an edition to a new work

[popcar2]

Feature Request

Problem / Opportunity

My biggest pet peeve as a librarian is how tedious it is to move editions to a new work. It's all too common for different works to be grouped up into one, and needing to move them out of the work one-by-one.

To move an edition to its own work, you currently need to...

1. Open the edition's page
2. Click Edit
3. Scroll down to "What work is this edition of"
4. Replace the work ID with "--" and wait a few seconds for "-- Move to a new work" to show up
5. Scroll down, add an edit note, click save

This doesn't sound that bad on paper, but when you need to do it 50 times in a row it becomes clear how much time is wasted.

Note: This isn't about moving an edition to another work, this is about creating a new work and moving an edition to it. I'm aware you can drag and drop editions to other works, but AFAIK there's no equivalent to move it to a new work.

Proposal

Here's a mockup I have where you can move an edition to a new work just by clicking a button when one (or more) editions are selected. This should make it super easy to decouple works, without having to manually go into each one and spend 4x the time.

Breakdown

Related files

Refer to this map of common Endpoints: *

Requirements Checklist

Checklist of requirements that need to be satisfied in order for this issue to be closed:

• [ ]

Stakeholders

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[Aayushdev18]

Hi! I’d love to work on this issue. Could you please assign it to me if it’s still open?

[cdrini]

Hi @Aayushdev18 , it seems like you've been assigned a few issues now! So we'll let those get sorted out first, and leave this open for others. Please feel free to comment again once the others are finished!

[aoitoya]

@popcar2 @cdrini

Hi, I tried following the recommended steps for moving an edition to a new Work by typing -- in the “What work is this edition of?” field, but I’m not seeing the “-- Move to a new work” autocomplete option at all.

What I tried

• Opened the edition page → Edit
• Scrolled to the Work field
• Cleared the existing Work ID
• Typed exactly -- and waited

What happened

The autocomplete request does fire (verified in the Network tab). However, the endpoint returns an empty array, which is likely why the “-- Move to a new work” option never appears. Expected behavior

Question

Has the -- → “Move to a new work” feature recently changed or been removed? Or is this a bug with the autocomplete endpoint not returning the special option?

If this workflow has been replaced with a new one, could you clarify the updated process?

Thanks!

[popcar2]

@aoitoya I'm 99% sure it only shows up if you're a super librarian, as regular librarians don't have the permission to move an edition to a separate work quickly. If you're in the OL Slack chat, someone might be able to help you there.

[aakwei]

@cdrini @popcar2 Hello, I'm a college student who wants to work on this issue for a project. Is it alright if I'm assigned to it?

[aoitoya]

@popcar2 Thanks for the clarification! That makes sense. If the option only appears for Super Librarians, that would explain why I’m not seeing it.

Would it be possible for me to get Super Librarian access on the dev environment so I can properly test this workflow? If there’s a formal process or a specific person I should contact for dev-mode permissions, please let me know.

Thanks!

[bettercallok]

Hello, I want to work on this can u assign it to me?