New libraries requested

Anolis
Hello,

I am a Belgian student at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL).
I just installed the Zotero extension for Firefox and I discover all the functionality and simplicity of use of Zotero.

Nevertheless, I am quite disappointed to discover that the three main libraries that I use specifically (and than most other students at UCL uses) does not work with automatic discovery "site translators".

The names and URLs of three libraries:

1. Libellule : Catalogue des bibliothèques de l'Université catholique de Louvain : http://www.bib.ucl.ac.be
2. Catalogue commun des bibliothèques fédérales : http://bib.belgium.be/
3. Unicat : union catalogue of Belgian libraries : http://www.unicat.be

Can you help ? I would like that these three libraries can be used with the automatic recognition of records.

In advance thank you!
  • fbennett
    (1) Seems to work for me here, searching for author "Derby" and using multiple download (the folder icon).

    (2) & (3) don't show a download icon.
  • adamsmith
    2) seems like a nightmare in that it's entirely javascript based, but they at least have a MARCXML link for items (behind a regular link), so that would likely be doable.
    3) doesn't seem to display any meaningful metadata anywhere, so that wouldn't work.
  • noksagt
    (3) has an UnAPI+RIS resolver, but they didn't have item ids for my searches. so it may potentially work in the future if they fix that.
  • Anolis
    (1) If I search "fédéralisme fiscal" (title) on this page : http://www.bib.ucl.ac.be/cgi/chameleon?skin=wucl&inst=0, I have got several results and, then, I choose "le fédéralisme fiscal au canada" I don't have any icon :-s Could you find the problem and help me ?

    (2) and (3) Specifically, if I want Zotero works on these two sites, how do I do? Contact the webmaster?

    Thanks !
  • Anolis
    (1) Some extra info: I think it's a language problem.
    Indeed, when I do a search on the French version of the site, the Zotero icon appears only for results with more than one hit.
    The English version, meanwhile, works every time :-)
    How to make this work also at any time with the French because it's the version I used by default?

    (2) & (3) My questions to my previous post remain valid :-)

    Thank you!
  • adamsmith
    For 3) get in touch with the library. For 2) someone would have to write a translator - you can try to convince the people at the library to do that, learn it yourself or find someone who is interested - writing translators is currently done exclusively by volunteers and those mostly write translators for pages that they might actually use:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/translators/coding

    1) might be simple enough to quickly fix in the translator that ajlyon might be willing to take a look.
  • adamsmith
    This would seem to address 3) - looks like this should be working
    http://twitter.com/#!/hochstenbach/status/76314981276192768
  • Anolis
    Waouu! It is fast! I sent an email to (2) and (3) 4 hours ago asking them if it was possible to integrate Zoreto!

    Thank you to Patrick Hochstenbach if it goes through here.

    So:

    (1): works very well in English but not in french ... Maybe ajlyon :-)
    (2): mail sent, awaiting response (catalog managed by a Belgian federal public service)
    (3): integrated API and after some testing I see that there are still some minor problems ... But, for being so fast, it's already great!

    I also noticed that there was no possibility to add a director of a book with several chapters written by different authors. At least I have not seen yet, of course!

    Once again for all the answers so fast.
  • adamsmith
    for the time being that person would be an editor - the distinction between editeur and directeur de publication isn't made in English so it didn't make it into Zotero - it will be included in the future, most likely as part of the next major update (i.e. 2.2 or 3.0 depending on what the Zotero folks decide their versioning numbers are going to be).
  • aurelep
    Can anyone tell me anything about the AMICUS, the Canadian National Library?

    http://amicus.collectionscanada.ca/aaweb/aalogine.htm

    It is not Zotero friendly at the moment. Is this just because no translator has been written for it or is it a problem with how the catalogue is structured? They do support Z39.50, does that help?

    ap
  • adamsmith
    edited October 27, 2011
    @aurelep - there is no Zotero translator and it's not a known catalog system - at least at first glance a translator wouldn't be easy to write - I don't see any way to get the data in a machine readable format (e.g. MARC).
    I also don't see COinS (Z39.50) on their result pages, else Zotero would and could pick that up.

    edit: I saw their page on Z39.50 - I don't think that would help for Zotero - if they'd embed the data in result pages (that is COinS) that would help.
    I also saw that they display MARC to registered users - that would be the way to write a translator, but it's quite a lot of work, so I doubt anyone's going to be eager to volunteer for that.
  • aurelep
    @adamsmith - Thanks. If you can suggest the best questions or suggestions, I would be happy to undertake lobbying them. ap
  • adamsmith
    We have a whole page outlining different options, just point them to this:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/exposing_metadata
  • aurelep
    After writing to Libraries and Archives Canada and waiting three weeks, I have finally received the following reply:

    "Records from AMICUS have been successfully loaded into a variety of referencing software packages including RefWorks, ProCite, and EndNote. At this time AMICUS only support the MARC21 format for downloading metadata. Instructions for downloading MARC records from AMICUS may be found here:
    http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/amicus/006002-130.4-e.html#down
    IT technical support"

    This seems fantastically backward – requiring saving, then downloading, then importing. Is it possible to write a translator for a system set up this way or is it beyond the scope of what Zotero translators can do?

    ap
  • adamsmith
    My sense is that the way to go is to write a translator that queries via Z39.50 and then import the MARC21 - Zotero can certainly do the latter, and I think it can do the former, but it's over my head.
    If they were to make the MARC more easily accessible, like, you know, pretty much every other library catalog that would be much easier (for most library catalogs, Zotero just follows a link to MARC or changes the URL of an item slightly to get to it).
  • aurelep
    Thanks @adamsmith

    If you (or someone) could be a more technically specific about what making the "the MARC more easily accessible, like, you know, pretty much every other library catalog," I would pursue it with them.

    There are major problems brewing our national library at the moment and this is another unfortunate indication.

    ap
  • adamsmith
    As I say - a link the the MARC record from the item page (rather than the requirement to log in, save the item, then download the MARC) would do, as would the possibility to get to the marc by changing the URL - say, add &display=marc at the end.
    Essentially anything that allows us to get to the marc record from the item page in one step will do.
  • ajlyon
    That said, it would be nice to add Z39.50 support. But that's not happening until I have a day to spare playing with unfamiliar binary formats.
  • aurelep
    After very persistent hounding of Library and Archives Canada, someone there has actually done more than return stock replies and got the IT people to look into things. It turns out there is an easy way to display the Marc record with a suffix to the url without registering:

    It is possible to see the MARC view of a bibliographic record when using unregistered AMICUSWeb. Simply add the following characters to the end of the URL: &d=3

    Here is a standard record:
    http://amicus.collectionscanada.ca/aaweb-bin/aamain/itemdisp?sessionKey=1322662685049_142_78_200_11&l=0&v=1&lvl=1&rt=1&itm=24266276&rsn=S_WWWdba2jqBrX&all=1&dt="Suspended+conversations+:+the+afterlife+of+memory+in+photographic+albums+/+Martha+Langford"&spi=-

    And here is the same record with the suffix added:

    http://amicus.collectionscanada.ca/aaweb-bin/aamain/itemdisp?sessionKey=1322662685049_142_78_200_11&l=0&v=1&lvl=1&rt=1&itm=24266276&rsn=S_WWWdba2jqBrX&all=1&dt="Suspended+conversations+:+the+afterlife+of+memory+in+photographic+albums+/+Martha+Langford"&spi=-&d=3

    Given this, does writing the translator become relatively simple?

    ap
  • adamsmith
    great!
    This will indeed make thinks a lot easier.
    The operative term is still _relatively_ simple, though - writing catalog translators is a lot of work, so don't expect this to happen overnight, but I'll put it on my list of things I'd like to do.
  • aurelep
    Thanks @ adamsmith!

    ap
  • adamsmith
    that went easier than I thought. Could you help me test this?
    Download this file
    https://github.com/adam3smith/translators/raw/amicus/Library%20Catalog%20(Amicus).js

    into the translator folder of your Zotero data directory:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data
    Restart Firefox - Amicus should now start working.
    Please report any problems you encounter - both examples of pages that don't work and data that looks bad. There's a good chance it won't be possible to fix everything, but normally library translators run pretty smoothly.
  • aurelep
    By golly, it seems to work!

    And I certainly wasn't expecting this to come along for ages, so what a lovely surprise.

    I've downloaded 4 items and everything was as it should be. Any suggestions as to the types of items that tend to show up problems?

    Under the gun for the next few days but will test more extensively during the coming week.

    Thanks for this!

    ap
  • adamsmith
    I hope there aren't any problems - that's the nice things about libraries: They are very systematic in what they do, so once you got a translator running there tend to be few glitches. Best thing is just to use normally for a bit and see if anything odd comes up.

    We'll push this to all Zotero clients soon, anything you find we can always fix later.

    And thanks for being persistent with the MARC, without that bit of information this wouldn't have happened.
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