I've talked before about how to merge unstructured references with the correct structured record, but what to do when there isn't a correctly structured reference to move it into?

This happens mostly with the amateur journals (those that don't have DOI: records and therefore can't easily be imported automatically).

What we need to do with these is both convert them to structured AND place them in the correct part of the hierarchy at the same time. Fortunately there's a tool that makes this easier.

I'm going to start with this reference to a LAPIS article.



I check the "Match Existing Article" button and confirm it hasn't already been entered - and in this case it hasn't.

I look in the Maintenance options list on the reference page for the Move into journal/report hierarchy option and click it.

We get this page:



The top half is just to double-check what we did before - to make sure we haven't already got this as a structured reference. If you see this article in this list then back out and merge the reference in normally.

But if not, you want to try to move it. Find the correct journal in the list on the bottom half of the page, and PLEASE be careful to select the right one, remember this is LAPIS not Extra Lapis!

Next, we get this form:



And, we fill in the fields for Series, volume and issue (if they have them). Please don't fill in a field if it is not needed. Most journals don't have a series number (so please don't add 1 for these), some journals just issue volume numbers (recent issues of Journal of the Russell Society, for example), and some just issue numbers (UK Journal of Mines and Minerals, for example).

In this case, we want to fill in the volume and the issue which are listed as 22(1)



Then click move and it will come up with something like this:



See the link to click here to return to the reference page? You MUST click that now to complete the job.



We now have the reference in the right place, but as you can see it's mostly blank. Let's fix that, click EDIT



The important part here is the 'Original Entry' section at the bottom. What we're going to do is cut & paste from there to fill in the correct parts, which is usually the author(s), the title, and the page range.



Now that's done we can click SAVE

And it's done! Now we might want to click 'Merge Duplicate References' and see if there are any other unstructured duplicates of this record that can be merged in too.

And while we're here...

Notice this article is in German. Why not return to the reference editor and click the UK flag underneath the 'Article' heading.



This opens up a new tab with Google Translate, and we can then click the COPY button (the stack of paper), close that tab and return to the edit form. Paste it into the box and we're good. (Note, Google don't allow a FREE way to automate this, so we have to copy & paste manually, but this is still fairly quick)