Retrieving item from worldcat using ISBN results in encoding errors ("é" -> "??")

hiq
I just got started with zotero. I tried to "add by identifier" with this id:

id=978-2-07-273067-2

By default, I think this uses worldcat. It's this item: https://www.worldcat.org/title/misrables/oclc/1146275554&referer=brief_results

So the title is "Les misérables".

But in the zotero interface, I instead see "Les mis??rables" (for 1/2 seconds I see the correct title but it switches to this afterwards).

Is this a known bug?
  • dstillman
    for 1/2 seconds I see the correct title but it switches to this afterwards)
    Are you using some sort of third-party plugins that changes metadata?

    If I paste 978-2-07-273067-2 into Add Item by Identifier, I get "Les misérables" with "BnF ISBN" in the Library Catalog field.

    WorldCat serves bad data for accents, which you can see it if you go to Cite in WorldCat, save a RIS file (EndNote format) to disk, and open it in a text editor — the "??" is in the actual data. But that's not what's being used for me, and if you're seeing the title actually change in the interface that sounds like a plugin doing something.

    If you can't figure it out, we'd want to see a Debug ID for this happening.
  • hiq
    > Are you using some sort of third-party plugins that changes metadata?

    I just started using zotero so I don't do anything fancy, still trying it out really. No plugin.

    D623256905
  • hiq
    http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1146275554?client=worldcat.org-detailed_record&page=endnote seems to return bad data as you pointed out. What data is used for you then?
  • hiq
    Mmh I:
    * deleted the entries
    * started it from the command-line with zotero -ZoteroDebugText

    and stopped / restarted it a few times, and now I cannot reproduce this anymore. I have no clue what fixed it...
  • dstillman
    If Zotero couldn't connect to BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France) for some reason, it would fall back to WorldCat and you'd get the question marks.
  • dstillman
    @hiq: In that debug output, it actually looks like the save operation was triggered twice, saving once via BnF and once via WorldCat. You should've ended up with two items — it wouldn't have "switched" to a different title.

    Do recall doing anything that might have caused that to happen?
  • hiq
    No I don't know how I would have ended up with two writes at the same time. I was trying to play with the various fields to debug the issue, but I don't think I was going fast with this.

    I've also tried several times to add the item, leading to about 8 duplicates, but they're not supposed to interfere with each other, right?

    I think your explanation about the BnF unavailability is the most plausible. If I add 127.0.0.1 bnf.fr to my /etc/hosts I can reproduce the é -> ?? character replacement. I'll know for next time!
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