Fields not inputting correctly for Proquest articles / incomplete bibliographies

Megan Benson
I'm positing on behalf a faculty member who has noticed several of her students' bibliographies that are include articles from Proquest that are incomplete (I'm a librarian).

This is the example I was given:
The Assassination of Fred Hampton by the FBI and Chicago Police, Forty Years Later - ProQuest. http://www.proquest.com/docview/213127407?accountid=14168. Accessed 14 Oct. 2020.

Students assume that the connector will collect all of the information and their citation will be correct. I've looked on the forum and I'm wondering if this has something to do with the proxy?

Any insight?
Thank you!
Megan
  • dstillman
    Students assume that the connector will collect all of the information and their citation will be correct.
    No, students need to be taught not to expect that, with Zotero or any other reference manager — that's a key part of learning how to use a reference manager. Zotero will extract high-quality metadata from a huge range of sites (much more than any other tool) and we do our best to make sure that continues to work well, but there will always be times when sites change or don't provide good data, so it's imperative to check data after importing to make sure it's correct and complete.

    If Zotero isn't importing high-quality data from a particular site, reporting that here is the way to get it fixed, but it's wrong to think of that in terms of bibliographies. Any citations will only be as good as the data being used to generate them.

    I can't check ProQuest at the moment, so someone else will need to look into that. If it's working for others, we'd want a Debug ID from the Zotero Connector for loading the page and only getting the webpage icon (and not seeing "ProQuest" listed when hovering over the save button, which is how you verify what translator is being used to save the page).
  • Megan Benson
    Absolutely agree students should be taught to check the info. I'm going to tell the professor to emphasize this.

    The Debug ID is: D1772990151.

    Thanks for your quick reply!
    Megan
  • dstillman
    That Debug ID doesn't seem to show you actually reloading the ProQuest page — we need to see the Zotero Connector's detection process that runs while the page loads. Can you try again?
  • Megan Benson
    Does this work: D1413681478 ?

    One thing I noticed - when I saved the page with the Full Text tab, but not the full pdf, it didn't capture all of the metadata, but when I clicked on the Full Text - PDF tab, it did. Could that have something to do with it?
  • dstillman
    No, that Debug ID is for saving. We really need a Debug ID for loading — not saving — the page.
  • dstillman
    To be clear, you should generally save from the Abstract page, not any other page, and not the PDF itself. Sometimes the other pages will work, and if we can fix it we will, but the Abstract page is the main thing we try to support.
  • Megan Benson
    Sorry. I guess I don't understand how to get the Debug ID for loading the page?

    I'm staring to think not saving from the Abstract page is the issue....

    Thank you for you help and patience; it really is appreciated.
  • dstillman
    Start debug output logging, go to the tab in question, press the reload button in your browser (or Ctrl-R on your keyboard), wait for the page to reload and the Zotero save icon to update, and then go back and submit the output.
    I'm staring to think not saving from the Abstract page is the issue
    Yes, likely. But we do try to save from the fulltextPDF page. Was the item saved properly in the debug output you provided above from that page? Because Zotero specifically tries to switch to the Abstract page and save from there:
    (3)(+0001919): translate message received in injected page https://www-proquest-com.proxy.[…]/docview/213127407/fulltextPDF/73CE592BF9274903PQ/1?accountid=[…]

    (3)(+0000001): HTTP POST http://127.0.0.1:23119/connector/ping

    […]

    (3)(+0000001): Translate: Beginning translation with ProQuest

    (3)(+0000000): Translate: Going to the Abstract tab

    (3)(+0000001): Translate: resolving URL https://www-proquest-com.proxy.[…]/docview/213127407/abstract/C4F21E442AC64E6EPQ/1?accountid=[…]

    […]

    (3)(+0000875): Translate: On Abstract page, scraping

    […]

    (3)(+0000006): Translate: Saving item

  • Megan Benson
    Ah, thanks for the explanation.

    Debug ID (for the Full Text Tab): D1010546685

    Debug ID (For the Abstract Tab): D1410156258

    It appears to save correctly when using the Abstract tab, but not for the Full Text tab.
  • dstillman
    Right, so you'll notice that when you're on that first page it's not being detected as ProQuest — you'll get a webpage icon, and if you hover over the icon it will say it's using the "Embedded Metadata" translator.

    On the Abstract page you'll get an icon showing what it actually detected (book, journal article, etc.), and hovering over it will show that it's using the "ProQuest" translator.

    We'll see if we can fix the problem from the Full Text tab. (I can't check at the moment.)
  • Megan Benson
    Thank you! I'll pass this along to the professor.
  • adamsmith
    (I have a fix for this, should be ready in the next couple of days)
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