ISBN lookup failed

cmcconnochie

A Complete Solution Guide to Real and Complex Analysis by Yu ISBN: 978-988-78797-8-7 (eBook) gave the message "Lookup Failed" when I entered the ISBN search. The ISBN is recorded on Amazon Kindle and in the book itself.

Is there a standard reference ISBN database that Zotero, Amazon, etc. reference?

aborel

There is no universal database for ISBNs (unfortunately). Your ISBN is not present in Worldcat, probably the largest used by Zotero https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero#add_item_by_identifier and it is probably not in the other ones such as the Library of Congress catalog.

You can add the record from Amazon using the web browser connector.

dstillman

(A good rule of thumb is that if you do a Google search for an ISBN and only see a few results (e.g., Amazon and a couple other sketchy sites distributing illegal copies of the book, as is the case here), it's probably just not registered anywhere.)

cmcconnochie

OK Good to know. Thanks

babak

This is also a problem with international titles. Using ISBN for Norwegian titles never returns anything. But we are used to an English-centered world by now :-)

aborel

In my view, the problem with ISBN lookups is when people expect them to be either universal, or centered at all (even English documents will fail sometimes) :-D Users will be disappointed on both accounts, because both expectations are unfortunately impossible.

So the best practice remains to use the browser connector to import metadata from one of the supported platforms. Don't assume the magic wand will be magical ;-)

adamsmith

We currently have robust support for English (esp. US-based), French, German, Brazilian, and Polish ISBNs. It's not universal -- as per the above, it still relies on items being in libraries -- but coverage should be good in general.
We'd like to further internationalize this, but the availability of APIs for ISBN lookup is pretty thin -- Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, and Portugal are the only other ones that I'm aware of (Italy has an API but requires authentication).

I'd suspect Norway may be somewhat unique in that group in that they provide very robust API services but have relatively little coverage in Worldcat (they may have good reasons for that; the libraries in Norway have done some very innovative stuff around metadata and OCLC, which runs Worldcat, has... many issues both practical and ethical)

aborel

I don't often wish that the Zotero forum had a "like" button, but this is one of those times.
Excellent points, thank you!

fulaoshi

I am constantly having difficulty adding ISBNs for non-US titles to Zotero. It would be really nice if there was a central database. It is a bit easier once a book is published, but the data should really be accessible as soon as the ISBN has been registered...

aborel

Instead of relying on ISBN lookup (which will never be universal), can't you find supported web sites that list these books (libraries, maybe Amazon) that list these books and capture the information through the browser connector?
https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero#via_your_web_browser

That's generally the best entry method in Zotero.

Edited to add: the existence of a central ISBN database is not something Zotero can control. It would require agreements between many corporate and public organizations worldwide, so I don't see it happening any time soon.

fulaoshi

"the existence of a central ISBN database is not something Zotero can control"

I understand that, but it is really unfortunate that such a database does not exist. It really should be the case that once an ISBN has been purchased for a future book anywhere in the world that metadata is immediately available. If using other methods was a reasonable alternative I would not have posted my comment.

aborel

Well, that's definitely not how the ISBN system works. ISBNs are often purchased in batch long before they are assigned to anything, the publishers often don't have any obligation to disclose anything about their books before they hit the shelves (physical or online), and very little after that, ... and when they do they often provide very poor metadata. I fully agree that there could be better processes from an end-user point of view!

Now can you explain your use case in more detail? I'm reading that you do not consider Zotero's standard entry method a reasonable alternative, but I am not sure that I interpret your post correctly. I'm intrigued :-)

fulaoshi

Thanks. That's interesting, and explains why things don't work as expected.

My use case is simple: I see posts about forthcoming books on social media. The publisher page often has an ISBN, but no metadata, and the book isn't yet listed in Google Books or Amazon. This is never a problem for books from North American or European publishers, but it is frequently a problem for books published in Asia (India, Malaysia, etc.). The only thing I can do is add the information manually, or save the URL with a reminder to check back in six months to see if it is available yet and then add it at that time. This isn't just a problem for Zotero, but other services I use like Storygraph which also have problems looking up ISBN information for Asian books.

Now that I understand better that publishers buy the numbers in batches this makes a bit more sense.