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Repairing incomplete metadata

The Repairs & Data Health panel helps administrators clean up books that were imported with incomplete metadata.

Open Settings → Server → Repairs.

Review before large changes

Create a backup first. Repairs are designed to be additive and safe to rerun, but there is no substitute for a known-good backup when external metadata is involved.

Issue types

Issue Definition Repair behavior
Missing ISBN Both ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 are blank Searches by title and contributor; saves only a strong, unambiguous match
Missing cover The cover URL is blank Tries ISBN first, then title and contributor; caches the best available cover
Missing media type The media type is blank Applies the configured administrator default
Missing location The book has no location relationship Assigns the default location
Missing contributor The book has no contributor link Requires manual editing or merging a Person record

The counts and sample rows on the page show the current scope of each issue. A book with an invalid or incorrect ISBN may not appear under Missing ISBN because that repair targets blank identifiers.

Find and assign missing ISBNs

  1. Review the Missing ISBN count and sample titles.
  2. Click Find and assign ISBNs.
  3. Leave the page open or return to the Repairs panel to watch progress.
  4. When the job completes, review updated, skipped, and failed counts.
  5. Open repaired books and verify that the ISBN belongs to the correct edition.
  6. Manually resolve the books that were skipped or failed.

The matcher uses Google Books and OpenLibrary. It compares title and contributor information, prefers an edition that agrees with an imported publication year when possible, validates ISBN checksums, and refuses ambiguous matches. It does not guess simply because a title looks similar.

When a confident ISBN is assigned, the repair also clears the personal Needs Review marker for attached users.

Fetch missing covers

  1. Review the Missing Cover count.
  2. Click Fetch and cache covers.
  3. Wait for the background job to finish.
  4. Open a few updated books and replace any edition-inappropriate cover manually.

The service uses a stored ISBN when available and falls back to title/contributor search. A provider may have no cover, may be temporarily unavailable, or may return a cover for a different edition; skipped items should be reviewed rather than repeatedly retried without checking the source data.

Other data-health fixes

  • Apply default format fills blank media types with the configured default. It does not change books that already have a format.
  • Assign default location links books without a location to the default location. Move books afterward if needed.
  • Missing Contributors is a review queue. Edit the book, add the contributor, or merge duplicate Person records.

Manual review workflow

For individual books, use the Library’s Needs Review only filter:

  1. Open Library.
  2. Enable Needs Review only.
  3. Open a book.
  4. Search by title/author or refresh metadata.
  5. Verify the edition, ISBN, cover, and contributors.
  6. Save the changes and clear Needs Review when the record is correct.

Saving verified metadata or running a successful ISBN repair can clear the flag. Do not clear it just to hide an unresolved record.

Job behavior and troubleshooting

  • Repairs are administrator-only.
  • A repair runs in the background and reports processed, updated, skipped, and failed items.
  • Only one bulk repair runs at a time.
  • Repairs only fill blank fields; they do not intentionally replace existing metadata.
  • External provider failures are isolated to individual items where possible.
  • Check application logs when a job stops unexpectedly.

If a result looks wrong, restore the pre-repair backup or correct the individual book rather than repeatedly running the same repair.