Save to Zotero thinks most items are web pages

meraine

Hello everyone. I am not very technically sophisticated, so I apologise for the clumsy description of my problem.
I add most of my references to Zotero individually using the "Save to Zotero" plugin on Chrome. Unfortunately, books that I find on my university library catalogue for some reason are often not recognised by Zotero as such and come up as web pages. I usually get around this by using WorldCat, Amazon, or some other database, but now I'm having the same problem with them; books that are clearly books are not being recognised as such by the plug-in. Any suggestions?

adamsmith

Edit: actually, if you're also getting this on WorldCat and Amazon, see
https://www.zotero.org/support/troubleshooting_translator_issues

meraine

I worked through the steps on the page above and didn't seem to have success, but after I set up Debug output logging and went to capture some data, it was working. So I'm not sure exactly when things turned around -- I suspect it was the reset translators action but am not sure, as it did not make a difference initially -- but all seems back to normal now. Thanks for your help!

meraine

Now that it is working, I have the original problem with the university library; individual books often come up as folders, and I get an error message. I'm not sure I can send examples as the catalogue is now password protected.

adamsmith

Your library catalog is password protected??? Not much we can do to help in that case I'm afraid.

meraine

Yes, this happened quite recently! Do you have any rough ideas on why an individual book would show up as a folder icon all the same?

dstillman

You can hover over the save icon to see what translator is being used. For a folder icon, there's a good chance that nothing else is being detected and it's just detected one or more DOIs on the page.

meraine

OK thanks.