[Koha-bugs] [Bug 25189] New: Make AutoCreateAuthorities less of a footgun with LinkerModule: Default

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.koha-community.org]

https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=25189

            Bug ID: 25189
           Summary: Make AutoCreateAuthorities less of a footgun with
                    LinkerModule: Default
 Change sponsored?: ---
           Product: Koha
           Version: master
          Hardware: All
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P5 - low
         Component: Cataloging
          Assignee: koha-bugs at lists.koha-community.org
          Reporter: phil at chetcolibrary.org
        QA Contact: testopia at bugs.koha-community.org
                CC: m.de.rooy at rijksmuseum.nl

If you read every word of the description of AutoCreateAuthorities in the
system prefs page, and then read every word about it in the manual, even if you
also read every word in the description and in the manual about LinkerModule,
you'll have no idea that by turning on AutoCreateAuthorities without changing
LinkerModule from its default value of Default, you've just given yourself
infinite authority duplicates.

The behavior of LinkerModule: Default is to link a field in a bib to an
authority when there is one and only one matching authority record. Without
AutoCreateAuthorities, that means if you have zero matches or two or more
matches, the field is unlinked. Fine, no problem.

With AutoCreateAuthorities on, the behavior is that if there are zero matches,
an authority record is created, if there is one match, the field is linked to
that existing authority record, if there are two matches a third duplicate
authority is created, and if there are three matches, a fourth duplicate match
is created, and if there are 2661 matches, a 2662nd duplicate match is created
(that being how many authority records my system had for the genre Thrillers
(Fiction) when I noticed this behavior).

Two ways to not create infinite duplicates occur to me:

Change what a LinkerModule returns, so it returns the match, whether it was a
fuzzy match, and also whether more than one match was found, so that in the
AutoCreateAuthorities case when more than one was found it can be left unlinked
rather than creating another duplicate, or,

Have C4/Linker/Default.pm check whether AutoCreateAuthorities is on, and if it
is and $behavior isn't either first or last, just force it to first rather than
creating infinite duplicates.

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