involuntary change of names while grabing information?!

olaf@work · August 9, 2010

I just experienced a weired change in how an authors name is writen on the website opac and how it is writen into zotero. The authors name is Margrid Bircken. It appears in two University-Libraries-OPACs (Hamburg and Frankfurt/M) this way. But when I grap the information into Zotero the entry is on Margit Birken.
I can't explain the reason. Only a guess: Is there an ortographic correction working in the background that interfere here? "Margit" is a much more common name than "Margrid" and "Birken" would be the plural of "Birke" which is a tree while "Bircken" is an arbitrary name.
Any other suggestions?!

olaf

Here comes the link to the OPAC sites:

University of Hamburg:
https://kataloge.uni-hamburg.de/DB=1/LNG=DU/SID=1b3e35de-4/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=1016&SRT=YOP&TRM=Ein+Riss+geht+durch+den+Autor

University of Frankfurt/M:
http://lbsopac.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/DB=30/SET=3/TTL=1/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=6015&DB=30&SRT=YOP&TRM=ppn:+218819943

I use Zotero 2.0.3 with firefox 3.6.4 under Windows XP

adamsmith · August 9, 2010

when grabbing data from library catalogs, Zotero doesn't scrape the data from the screen, but instead uses data the catalogue provides in the background - usually so called MARC (machine-readable-cataloging) data.
Apparently that differs from the data that is displayed - Zotero doesn't change data it imports (occasionally special characters can go wrong, but that's not the case here obviously).
get in touch with the respective libraries to clear that up -
note that e.g. StaBi Hamburg lists her once as "Bircken" and once as "Birken" even on the page that's displayed.

Edit: ah - not sure that's exactly it - Zotero actually seems to get the data not from the libraries but from Worldcat via the ISBN number. And it's wrong on Worldcat:
http://www.worldcat.org/title/riss-geht-durch-den-autor-transmediale-inszenierungen-im-werk-von-peter-weiss/oclc/316277330&referer=brief_results
I don't know if it's worth reporting these types of errors to worldcat, but you could try

noksagt · August 9, 2010

Those particular pages apparently use COinS, but I don't see the author in the COinS tag & haven't yet bothered to see where that is being pulled from. I also have not checked if one of the existing OPAC translators (or requests for a new translator) might not be better...

olaf@work · August 9, 2010

Thanks for the quick reply. I have sent error-messages to both libraries and hopefully they will react with an bug fix of their respective pages. Worldcat is informed as well.

Olaf