National Library of Quebec translator faulty

aurelep · April 21, 2014

The site translator for IRIS, the BANQ (Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec) is not functioning correctly.

http://iris.banq.qc.ca/iris.aspx

It is only ingesting Author, Title, and year of publication.

For example, see:

http://iris.banq.qc.ca/alswww2.dll/APS_ZONES?fn=ViewNotice&Style=Portal3&q=3565128&Lang=FRE

The resulting CMS bibliography:

Wilson, David A. Thomas D’Arcy McGee / David A. Wilson, 2008.

Complete version should look give this:

Wilson, David A. Thomas D’Arcy McGee. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008.

ap

adamsmith · April 21, 2014

you're seeing number 7. here:
https://www.zotero.org/support/troubleshooting_translator_issues
this is the COinS translator and that's all the data it's providing in COinS. You could try contacting them about improving their COinS data. There used to be a translator, but it's not longer working. I contacted the library about access to better (i.e. MARC) data via the catalog, but they told me that wasn't possible and not going to happen, so I don't think there's much we can do. Scraping the info from the page is a big mess, so I'm not very inclined to do that.
I fear your best hope is to wait until they switch their catalog system and/or use a different catalog. Sorry about that.

aurelep · April 21, 2014

Thanks @adamsmith.

I'll see what I can do (I'm in Montreal and may be able to dig up some contacts).

Yes, it used to work. Does that mean there used to be access to the MARC data, but then it became unavailable? Any idea why this would be?

The thing is only 9 years old, so I can't imagine them changing the catalogue any time soon – it would involve 362 tenders of government contracts and subcontracts.

Would improving the COinS data just involve flicking a few switches as to what is included by default?

ap

adamsmith · April 22, 2014

no, the old translator scraped off the page, that just broke after a site redesign (and is at least not trivial to fix). But more importantly, I doubt the old data was ever very good. Getting such scraping to work decently well is a ton of work.

As for COinS - I don't know how hard this would be for them, but to give you a sense, look e.g. at the book you link to above. The COinS is:

<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Focoins.info%3Agenerator&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Thomas%20D%27Arcy%20McGee%20%2F%20David%20A%2E%20Wilson&rft.title=Thomas%20D%27Arcy%20McGee%20%2F%20David%20A%2E%20Wilson&rft.series=&rft.au=Wilson,%20David%20A%2E,%201950-&rft.date=2008"> </span>

We'd be hoping for something more along these lines (this is Zotero generated):

<span class='Z3988' title='url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_id=urn%3Aisbn%3A9780773533578&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Thomas%20D'Arcy%20McGee&rft.place=Montre%CC%81al&rft.publisher=McGill-Queen's%20University%20Press&rft.aufirst=David%20A.&rft.aulast=Wilson&rft.au=David%20A.%20Wilson&rft.date=2008&rft.isbn=9780773533578'></span>

note the rft.publisher, rft.place, and rft.isbn field, the fact that the title doesn't contain the author etc.

plavigueur · September 23, 2014

We experience the same problems at our college with our library catalog which is developed and supported by an ILS company named BiblioMondo (same with BANQ). I will open a ticket on their support site to see if they can improve their cOins data.
Keep you posted.