PLP Match Rules: Synonyms §

The purpose of the PLP Synonyms is to decrease the number of XCFail groups that need human review in MCU.  ¶

This is achieved by identifying minor differences that cause crosschecks to fail (most readily done when reviewing the XCFails in MCU), and then creating a synonym rule in the PLP configuration to resolve these minor differences the next time the program is run. ¶

Synonyms are essentially replacement strings¹⁾ for patterns that you have identified as consistently causing a crosscheck to fail. For example, in the title field, the ampersand character ('&') is often substituted for the word 'and'. Since this difference is significant enough to cause an XTITL crosscheck to fail, we need a way to tell the program to consider ' & ' and ' and ' to be equivalent–Synonyms are how we do this.  ¶

PLP consults the synonym rules during crosscheck evaluation. If the crosscheck fails, the program then checks to see if any synonym rules have been defined for that crosscheck. If so, the corresponding 'word/phrase's are then matched against the data extracted by the crosscheck, and if there is a match, the matching data is replaced by the 'synonym', and the crosscheck is run again²⁾. ¶

A Synonym rule consists of 6 fields: ¶

1. a 'serial' number–uniquely identifying the rule ¶
2. an 'enabled' flag–so you can turn off a rule without deleting it ¶
3. a 'crosscheck'–any crosscheck available in PLP ¶
4. a 'match flag'–determines how the synonym is applied (more details below) ¶
5. a 'word or phrase'–the string to be matched in the MARC data ¶
6. the 'synonym'–the replacement string for the above ¶

To access the Synonym rules, open a PLP config and click on the 'Synonyms' button at the bottom of the form. This will display an empty table (to which may be added several default synonyms) with the 6 columns described above listed across the top. This table will contain one row for each synonym rule that you create.  ¶

The default PLP synonyms table looks like this: ¶

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Unlike the Crosscheck Redirection rules, the Synonym table and Synonym work area have been combined into a single form.  ¶

Click here for instructions on using this form ¶

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