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Refining Finna Metadata

Source: vignettes/articles/analyse_metadata.Rmd
analyse_metadata.Rmd

Introduction

The refine_metadata function is designed to clean and standardize metadata retrieved from the Finna API. This function enhances metadata usability by:

  • Validating Required Fields: Ensures the presence of specified metadata fields, returning NULL if any are missing.
  • Selecting Relevant Fields: Allows users to specify which metadata fields to retain for streamlined analysis.
  • Handling Missing Values (Optional): If fill_na = TRUE, missing values (NA) are replaced with placeholders.
  • Logging Missing Data (Optional): If verbose = TRUE, prints a summary of missing values to assist in data quality assessment.

This preprocessing step ensures metadata consistency, improving its reliability for subsequent analysis and visualization.

Example Usage 

library(finna)
library(ggplot2)

# Retrieve metadata from Finna API
sibelius_data <- search_finna("sibelius")

# Refine metadata and display missing data summary
refined_data <- refine_metadata(sibelius_data)
print(refined_data)
## # A tibble: 100 × 8
##    Title                   Author Year  Language Formats Subjects Library Series
##    <chr>                   <chr>  <chr> <chr>    <chr>   <chr>    <chr>   <chr> 
##  1 Sibelius favourites : … Sibel… 2001  NA       Äänite… NA       Lapin … NA    
##  2 Sibelius                Lampi… 1995  fin      Kirja,… Sibeliu… Anders… NA    
##  3 Sibelius                Lampi… 1984  fin      Kirja,… Sibeliu… Anders… NA    
##  4 Sibelius                Lampi… 1984  fin      Kirja,… Sibeliu… Heili-… NA    
##  5 Sibelius                Tawas… 1997  fin      Kirja,… Sibeliu… Rutakk… NA    
##  6 Sibelius                RINGB… 1948  swe      Kirja,… NA       Fredri… NA    
##  7 Sibelius                Ringb… 1948  swe      Kirja,… Sibeliu… Lukki-… NA    
##  8 Sibelius                Ringb… 1948  swe      Kirja,… Jean Si… Svensk… NA    
##  9 Sibelius                Barne… 2007  eng      Kirja,… Sibeliu… Helmet… NA    
## 10 Sibelius.               Ottaw… 1968  NA       Kirja,… NA       Åbo Ak… NA    
## # ℹ 90 more rows

Visualizing Metadata Distribution

The top_plot() function can be used to visualize key metadata distributions, such as author frequency and yearly publication distribution.

Author Distribution Analysis 

# Retrieve and refine metadata
sibelius_data <- search_finna("sibelius")
refined_data <- refine_metadata(sibelius_data)

# Plot top 10 authors with frequency percentages
top_plot(refined_data$Author, field = "Author", ntop = 10, show.percentage = TRUE) +
    xlab("Author") +  
    ylab("Percentage")

author_distribution

Yearly Publication Distribution 

library(finna)

# Retrieve and refine metadata
sibelius_data <- search_finna("sibelius")
refined_data <- refine_metadata(sibelius_data)

# Plot publication year distribution
top_plot(refined_data$Year, field = "Year", ntop = 10, show.percentage = TRUE) +
  xlab("Publication Year") +  
  ylab("percentage distribution of Publications")

year_distribution

This vignette demonstrates how refine_metadata() improves metadata usability, facilitating effective analysis and visualization using the top_plot() function.