Viola in Finna

Viola is the Finnish national discography and the national bibliography of sheet music, maintained by the National Library of Finland. It contains information on Finnish music recordings and sheet music, as well as music archives included in the National Library’s collections.

This R Markdown document provides a comprehensive guide to querying and analyzing Viola collection data using the Finna API and the fetch_viola_records function.

Viola Collection in Finna

The fetch_viola_records function allows batch processing of data from the Viola collection in Finna, across multiple year ranges, and handles records without date information.

Example Usage

Fetch Data Across Year Ranges

The following example fetches data from the Viola collection for the year ranges: 0–1699, 1700–1799, and 1800–1899.

library(finna)

# Fetch records
results <- fetch_viola_records(
  base_query = "*",
  base_filters = c('collection:"VIO"'), # Filters for the Viola collection
  year_ranges = list(c(0,1699),c(1700,1799),c(1800,1899)),           # Year ranges to query
  include_na = TRUE,                   # Include records with missing dates
  limit_per_query = 100000,              # Maximum records per query
  total_limit = Inf,                 # Overall record limit
  delay_after_query = 3                # Delay between API calls
  )

# View the number of records fetched
print(nrow(results))

## [1] 3479

head(results)

## # A tibble: 6 × 10
##   id    Title Author Year  Language Formats Subjects Library Series last_indexed
##   <chr> <chr> <chr>  <chr> <chr>    <chr>   <chr>    <chr>   <chr>  <chr>       
## 1 fikk… Demo  NA     NA    zxx      Äänite… NA       Kansal… NA     NA          
## 2 fikk… Een … Palm,… 1678  swe      Nuotti  1678; t… Kansal… NA     NA          
## 3 fikk… [Ant… NA     1608  lat      Nuotti  arkisto… Kansal… NA     NA          
## 4 fikk… [Zac… NA     1676  swe      Nuotti  Collian… Kansal… NA     NA          
## 5 fikk… [Gra… NA     1616  fin      Nuotti  arkisto… Kansal… NA     NA          
## 6 fikk… [Kor… NA     1679  lat      Nuotti  arkisto… Kansal… NA     NA

Fetch Records Without Dates

You can also fetch records missing the main_date_str field:

# Fetch undated records
undated_records <- search_finna(
  query = "*",
  filters = c('collection:"VIO"', '-main_date_str:*'),
  limit = Inf
)

# View undated records
print(undated_records)

## # A tibble: 2,684 × 10
##    id             Title    Author Year  Language Formats Subjects Library Series
##    <chr>          <chr>    <chr>  <chr> <chr>    <chr>   <chr>    <chr>   <chr> 
##  1 fikka.5207343  [Gradua… NA     NA    fin      Nuotti  arkisto… Kansal… NA    
##  2 jykdok.1827911 Sotiemm… NA     NA    fin      Äänite… NA       Jyväsk… NA    
##  3 fikka.4941590  Demo     NA     NA    zxx      Äänite… NA       Kansal… NA    
##  4 fikka.4941603  Boogie … NA     NA    zxx      Äänite… NA       Kansal… NA    
##  5 fikka.4941825  Close-up NA     NA    zxx      Äänite… NA       Kansal… NA    
##  6 fikka.4997308  [Demo]   NA     NA    zxx      Äänite… NA       Kansal… NA    
##  7 fikka.4997735  [Demo]   NA     NA    zxx      Äänite… NA       Kansal… NA    
##  8 fikka.5206900  Oulu Ho… NA     NA    mul      Äänite… amerika… Kansal… NA    
##  9 fikka.4997560  [Demo]   NA     NA    eng      Äänite… NA       Kansal… NA    
## 10 fikka.4994228  [Demo]   NA     NA    zxx      Äänite… NA       Kansal… NA    
## # ℹ 2,674 more rows
## # ℹ 1 more variable: last_indexed <chr>

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Data Visualization

The Viola collection data can be visualized using metadata refinement and plotting functions.

Author Distribution

library(finna)
library(ggplot2)

# Refine metadata and visualize author distribution
refined_data <- refine_metadata(results)
top_plot(refined_data, field = "Year") +
  xlab("Frequency") +  # Custom X-axis label
  ylab("Year")  # Custom Y-axis label