Having trouble with EconLit (via OCLC WorldCat)

valiantdust · February 20, 2009

I've been having consistent trouble with Zotero incorrectly translating EconLit. My school subscribes through OCLC WorldCat, and Zotero wants to use the OCLC WorldCat translator -- which doesn't work properly.

Here's what it does (I'm running Firefox 3.0.6 with Zotero 1.5-sync3.8 on Vista):
-- the icon in the address bar is always a book, but the saved reference is so far always listed as a journal article.
-- Zotero accurately captures the title, year, and the first author, but following authors tend to recorded as "Blow, Joe , (first)". Source, language, abstract, volume, issue, pages, and everything else winds up in the Extra field.

Here's a page where I've encountered this:

http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org/WebZ/FSFETCH?fetchtype=fullrecord:sessionid=fsapp7-40221-frfgbtm9-wc4kdu:entitypagenum=5:0:recno=2:resultset=1:format=FI:next=html/record.html:bad=error/badfetch.html:entitytoprecno=2:entitycurrecno=2:numrecs=1

I hope it works for you -- I generally have to log in to get access off-campus, but a direct link to a search result might still work. If not, I apologize, and I'll see if I can get Scaffold to work on my rig. Thanks much!

Tjowens · February 23, 2009

Mason does not have access to EconLit through OCLC's set up, but if you can access the journal through Cambridge Scientific Abstracts the records look great there. I did try some of OCLC's first search journal databases and they failed in a similar fashion. It looks like the problem is OCLC's ill formatted export records. They don't seem to support a common interchange format like RIS or BibTeX, just their own one off format.

valiantdust · February 26, 2009

Update on this issue. I was able to get Scaffold working on a separate Firefox profile (with Zotero 1.0 installed rather than 1.5SP). I went ahead and wrote a new translator for EconLit via OCLC. The code is ugly (I'm brand new to Javascripting) but it does the job relatively well. The only remaining issue (that I know of so far) is that I can't figure out how to get the finished translator into the database for the original Firefox profile (running Zotero 1.5). Working on it ...

dstillman · February 26, 2009

The only remaining issue (that I know of so far) is that I can't figure out how to get the finished translator into the database for the original Firefox profile (running Zotero 1.5)

Translators in 1.5 are stored in separate JS files in the 'translators' directory within the data directory. Copy and paste the detect and code sections of your translator into a plain text file, one on top of the other, and then add a JSON block to the top with the metadata you entered in Scaffold, using another translator from that directory as a template. When you next start up Firefox, the translator should be available. (Make a backup copy outside of the data directory to be safe.)

If you think others would have interest in the translator, you can post the plain-JS version as a file to zotero-dev, and someone will review it for inclusion in Zotero.