Zotero Web Extension No Longer Saving Books

jdblount83

I've been using the Zotero Connector extension in Chrome to save books to my library for several years. I usually use Google Books or Amazon for finding the bibliographic info (historically Google Books has been more reliable). But now the Connector extension isn't saving any book information accurately in either of these sites. When I try, I get the following error message:

"An error occurred saving with Google Books. Attempting to save using Save as Webpage instead."

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Connector in Chrome. Any suggestions?

dstillman

We always need an example URL for problems with saving. But if you're having trouble access many sites, see Troubleshooting Problems Saving to Zotero.

jdblount83

Here's an example. I get this same error message, and Zotero saves it as a web page instead of a book when I tried for this site.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Remaking_the_World/ipSizwEACAAJ?hl=en&bshm=rime/1

DWL-SDCA

The ISBN from the Google page is different from the ISBN for the book from that listed for the print or paper page from the Crossway publisher page.

Zotero will save other books by that author that are linked-to from that page (Shadow of the Titanic).

Part of the issue might be that even from the (Crossway) publisher page, the metadata is incomplete.

You can get the full metadata if you enter the correct ISBN for the print or from the paper version of the book into the Zotero magic wand tool.
978-1-4335-8056-7 ; 978-1-4335-8054-3

I try not to use the Google Books as the source for metadata as it is frequently incomplete. It seems that the newer GB interface might be even more problematic.

jdblount83

Very helpful - thank you!

aparnazambare

I am having the same problem - saving Amazon books.

DWL-SDCA

It might be that someone could help you if you provide specific examples.

If you Google the book, you can usually get a book's ISBN (and ISBNs for several editions). Entering the ISBN into Zotero's Magic Wand field is likely to capture the metadata you want.

Many books for sale on Amazon no longer include ISSNs in the book information provided. Whether on my iPad or my desktop the metadata Zotero captures is not complete. This seems to be an Amazon "feature" more than a Zotero problem. I can search for a book by its ISBN but when displayed the information listed often doesn't include the ISBN. (Some do, some don't.)

When I view the Amazon webpage source, the metadata is not obvious - are there any metadata tags at all? There are mostly zillions of lines of scripts and tools to track my account's viewing history.