Importing call numbers using embedded data in COinS

sachaj

Hi,

I am trying to get the call number for books into Zotero using embedded metadata with COinS. This is for a list of new acquisitions for our library.

Apologies if this has been already been answered, I've searched the forum and there are a variety of threads, some quite old, but I have not gotten a clear indication of a solution.

I have the usual "rft.btitle", "rft.au", etc. Is there anything I can use to get the call number into the Zotero Call number field? Is there a "rft.callnumber" I can use?

Is there an exhaustive list of all the available rft fields in COinS and how they map to Zotero fields?

If such an option does not exist, is there a work around?

Thanks for any advice or insight,
Sacha

adamsmith

I'm afraid not, no. COinS was never terribly well specified but you can get the Zotero mappings from here: https://github.com/zotero/utilities/blob/master/openurl.js -- no callNumber, as you'll note (because openurl basically uses DC vocabulary, which doesn't have call numbers).

No workaround I can think of with COinS -- are any other formats workable?

sachaj

Thanks for the reply and the link adamsmith, I suspected as much.

If there is no workaround using COinS, any other method will do, I'm not picky and any format that would get the Zotero web plugin to recognize and import citations would work.

adamsmith

Also somewhat outdated/poorly supported, but the best way to get exactly the Zotero data that you want into Zotero is unAPI, see https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/exposing_metadata

I do hope we'll get proper JSON-LD/schema.org support in the near future, in which case that'll be the best solution.

edit: or depending on your use case, a custom translator that you may just need to install locally. That'd likely just be a couple of hours of work.

sachaj

Thanks adamsmith. I'll take a look at unAPI. For now, I have put the call number into the rft.place field, this seems acceptable to me for the time being.
Thanks for your help.

sachaj

Just to follow up here for posterity.

For this particular use case, while we concatenate publication data into one field and that leaves 'Place' empty to reuse for the call number and location, it seems wrong. So I've decided to put the call number info into the 'Rights' field. This makes no sense semantically, but in Zotero the 'Rights' field is adjacent to the call number field in the display, so visually and for copy and pasting it works much better. Also, the 'Rights' field is generally much less used than the Place field, so possibly less jarring to find a call number in there. The other option is to use rft.description which puts it in the 'Abstract' field. I remain ambivalent about these choices.