WorldCat and multilingual records (Chinese, Japanese, etc.)

chrisbenda
My question has to do with WorldCat and multilingual records (Chinese, Japanese, etc.). I've looked at various Zotero forum postings, and I was wondering what the state of the question is.

If I use the FirstSearch version of WorldCat, I get garbled text in place of the characters, along with Romanized text:

ç¶“çµ¡ä¹‹ç ”ç©¶ / Jing luo zhi yan jiu / Wanshan, Changlang ; zhu.

If I use the open version of WorldCat, I get the correct character text minus the Romanization:

經絡之研究

The record I'm looking at can be seen in Open WorldCat at http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/818432977.

I'm wondering if this is as good as it is for the moment. (BTW, I've tried the multilingual version of Zotero, but it doesn't seem to do any better with either version of WorldCat.)

Thanks!
  • aurimas
    Can you provide the FirstSearch URL? I haven't had a chance to look into this yet, so it might be inconsequential, but just so it's there for completeness
  • chrisbenda
    Thank you for your reply, aurimas. Since FirstSearch WorldCat is a subscription version, you would need to have access (e.g., through a college or university library). If you're able to get access, this is the record's accession number: 818432977.
  • aurimas
    edited June 17, 2015
    Yes, we're aware of the access restrictions, but most of us have some sort of way to access these databases. I'm not able to reproduce this issue for the accession number you provided, but it's possible that I'm accessing the resource in some different way. So again, we really do need to see the URL exactly as you see it in order to figure this out.

    Edit: Also, when you hover over the Zotero URL bar icon, what does it say in the popup?
  • chrisbenda
    Here is the URL, aurimas: http://firstsearch.oclc.org/WebZ/FSQUERY?format=BI:next=html/records.html:bad=html/records.html:numrecs=10:sessionid=fsapp7-46519-ib34of10-ihip40:entitypagenum=3:0:searchtype=advanced.

    I'm not able to answer your question about the popup at this moment; I'll have to get back to you about that.

    Am I correctly understanding that when you use FirstSearch WorldCat, you're getting something other than ç¶“çµ¡ä¹‹ç ”ç©¶ / Jing luo zhi yan jiu / Wanshan, Changlang ; zhu? If so, what are you seeing? Thanks.
  • aurimas
    The institution I am at only has access to newfirstsearch.oclc.org so I can't test this directly. Could you produce Debug IDs from Zotero and, if you're not using Firefox, from the browser connector? We may be able to debug from there.

    Zotero's FirstSearch scraper uses the EndNote export option available on the website. I'm not really sure where in the interface that is, but if you could export that file, post it somewhere (e.g. Dropbox) and link to it, or email to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread, it may be helpful.
  • chrisbenda
    Quite interestingly, the original record suddenly imports quite well into Zotero. So I've found multiple other records that don't work. A debug ID for one of them is D680819054.

    I'll send the EndNote export file from FirstSearch WorldCat to support@zotero.org.

    Thanks again!

This is an old discussion that has not been active in a long time. Before commenting here, you should strongly consider starting a new discussion instead. If you think the content of this discussion is still relevant, you can link to it from your new discussion.

Sign In or Register to comment.