Data – Exporting, Collating and Cleaning Up

Much as there are differences between the conduct of searches in BoB and TRILT, there are also differences in the way that search result data are exported. It is important to note that there are also differences in the ways that export is conducted on Macintosh computers and Windows PCs. The following notes will endeavour to present a clear guide whichever machine you are working on.

Exporting and Importing – TRILT

Using the “Save results as” feature located at the top of the results (Figure 3), export the results as a CSV file – if using Windows, this file can be found in the Downloads folder of your documents. Tip: It can be helpful to move the results files from Downloads into a dedicated folder and rename each file to the search term used (it automatically saves as the date) e.g. “20201006” to “Henry VIII AND War”.

Figure 3: Export data from TRILT as a CSV file

It is important to note that the “Save results as” feature is not available if there are more than 100 matches for a given search. To avoid having to manually transfer the information, you will need to use a workaround. We suggest, again, the use of a series of consecutive date ranges to break the results into manageable aliquots.

The next step is to import the results files into Excel. At this point the details of how to undertake the transfer are different for Windows and for Mac users.

Exporting and Importing – BoB

Unlike TRILT, search results from BoB cannot presently be converted into Excel-ready files for export. This means that your search results will need to be inputted manually into the spreadsheet. Whilst this may take longer than exporting results from TRILT and can be prone to human error, there are ways to make the process smoother.

  1. Open the first search result in a new tab of your browser.

  2. On the individual result page, click “Add to a playlist” and create a new playlist named after the search term (Figure 15).

Figure 15: Programmes can be added to as many playlists as you want, to maximise later re-discovery

  1. Return to the results page, open the next result and add to the playlist you have just created – repeat this for all of the available results. As noted previously, only the first 1000 results are available to view on BoB, therefore if you really need details of all transmissions (a lot of data!) you will need to apply a filter such as a set of consecutive date ranges to generate a full list. Creating such a playlist compiles the results of each individual search term in a place that is easy to find, doesn’t require searching again and reflects the results at the time of searching (repeating the same search at a later date may produce a different number of results due to newer programmes being added, for example).

  2. To find your playlists, click “My BoB” and then select the “Playlists” tab (Figure 16).

Figure 16: The “Playlists” feature enables you to store programme records where you want them

  1. Open the playlist and go through each programme information page – this page contains the same information that can be found when exporting results from TRILT e.g. Title, Episode, Duration, Broadcast Date etc.

  2. Copy the information you require across to your Excel spreadsheet.

Excluding duplicate results

Although ‘Show only latest broadcast’ can be selected in TRILT, that feature is used automatically unless selected otherwise in BoB. Despite this, duplicate results may appear in the overall initial dataset. There are several potential reasons for this:

  • Different search terms can be related to the same programme(s) e.g. “Horrible Histories Horrid Henry VIII Special” appears in the search results for both “Henry VIII AND War” and “Henry VIII and France”
  • Crossover between BoB and TRILT e.g. a search term generates 15 results in TRILT, 41 results in BoB, so appears as 56 results overall. However, 4 of those programmes appear under the search term in both databases and thus there are actually 52 unique results.
  • Sign Zone programmes – the exact same programme, but sign language enabled and often assigned a different programme ID.
  • Programmes and programme information have been imported into TRILT from a variety of sources over the history of the database. It is therefore feasible that some programmes may have been assigned more than one ID at different times.
  • It is also worth alerting users to the fact that some series are given a generic ID. For example, for ITV News London: the ID 16F3C6EC is used across many broadcasts. If your search results include several entries for ITV News London code 16F3C6EC but with different transmission dates, these will likely be unique broadcasts in spite of the title/ID combination suggesting otherwise. Some caution is therefore necessary when removing duplicates. Notwithstanding these caveats, duplicates should be excluded in order to reflect the true number of unique results. This can be done using the Programme ID, which is the same for a programme in both BoB and TRILT e.g. the ID for “Time Team – The First Tudor Palace?” is 00578A53 in both BoB and TRILT.