Error with Zenon using Firefox and Zotero standalone

massimo.betello
Report ID 124711531

When I try to save a book, book chapter, anything from zenon.dainst.org I receive a translator error. If I use COinS it saves only part of the information.
However, the Zotero icon DOES appear.
I have the latest Firefox version, the latest Zotero Version, the latest translators for Zotero.
This has going on for months....

Steps to reproduce.
1) go to zenon.dainst.org
2) search for any book
3) click on zotero icon
4) you get the "Could not save item. An error occurred while saving this item"

Any help?
  • adamsmith
    Looks like the site has changed, yes.
    @zuphilip you wrote the translator -- do you have time to take a look?
  • zuphilip
    It seems that the "Internal Format" tab will show the MARC data not anymore as XML but in some HTML table. I will try to look at it more and hopefully fix it in the next days/weeks.
  • adamsmith
    This is now fixed courtesy of zuphilip.
    Your version of Zotero will automatically update within 24hs, or you can update manually using the "Update Now" button in the "General" tab of the Zotero preferences. If you're using Standalone, restart Zotero and your browser after updating.

    Any further problems let us know & thanks for reporting
  • n.m.-s.
    Is it possible that they have changed the format again? Zotero imports data from Zenon but apparently does not use the MARC-entry for that. Instead, it uses the html-human readable data which is woefully incomplete.
  • adamsmith
    Looks good to me -- could you link to and/or describe a search that doesn't import correctly/completely?
  • n.m.-s.
    Thanks for your quick answer!
    Take this record for example: https://zenon.dainst.org/Record/001567008. "Export Bibtex" does not work properly as for some strange reason the information exported is incomplete (publication and pages are missing; this is Zenon's fault). With the contextual menu "Save to Zotero (DAI-Zenon)" the entry is imported as webpage and the information even more incomplete.
    With an alternative reference manager (Bookends), the information is imported correctly as it accesses the MARC-record directly.
    I am using Zotero 5.0.91, BTW.
  • adamsmith
    Imports as a journal article for me. The metadata isn't great, but that'd mainly be a function of MARC being bad for journal articles.

    Run through https://www.zotero.org/support/troubleshooting_translator_issues to troubleshoot.
  • n.m.-s.
    Thanks for the troubleshooting page! However, I see no major omission on my side in terms of points to troubleshoot.

    If you import data, is the pages-field populated (e.g. https://zenon.dainst.org/Record/001275808)? In my case, it is not.
  • adamsmith
    No, it's not, but it's not importing as a Webpage. It's importing as a journal article as it should. As I said, MARC is a terrible format for journal articles, with a number of poorly specified fields, so a MARC based translator will tend to produce mediocre results on those. We could maybe get pages importing as such, but I'm skeptical about other elements like volume and issue since those are all crammed into the same MARC field (773)
  • n.m.-s.
    In the meantime, I found out why and how it imports as Webpage: Obviously, the DAI-Zenon translator only works when the tab "Holdings" is selected. When on, for example, "Staff View" Zotero falls back on the generic COinS-translator.

    The whole Zenon is a shame considering the amount of time which was put into this database, and the difficulties to extract this information again.

    However, I would very much appreciate if at least the pages-issue could be fixed. As mentioned, personally I use a different reference manager but I advise my first-year students to use Zotero, and Zenon is the most important database for my academic field (archaeology).
  • adamsmith
    Actually turned out that there was code to handle journal articles that just wasn't called because Zenon changed their MARC. I've now pushed out a fix (that will also make the translator work on the comments/staff view etc. views) and it should import pretty nicely.
  • n.m.-s.
    Thanks for the quick fix! This is a definite enhancement!
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