Meta-comment: Is this thread even watched? I always get the feeling there is not enough feedback here, in the form of 'added to the list', 'already on our list, working on it' or even 'sorry, that's not a priority for this and that reason'.
first of all i would like to thank you for this brillant piece of software. it works with a lot of online-catalogues of books that i work with and has nearly all features i have been missing in similar applications.
Is it possible to add an translator for http://www.kubikat.org? That would be very helpful! This catalogue records nearly all books and articles on art in early modern history in all languages.
It was set up by the "Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte in Florenz", the "Bibliotheca Hertziana" in Rom, and the "Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte" in München. It is accessible in multiple languages (for example in english http://www.kubikat.org/mrbh-cgi/kubikat_en.pl or in french http://www.kubikat.org/mrbh-cgi/kubikat_fr.pl).
kubikat works nicely for me - you need to actually "show" the items in question, but then the page has embedded COinS, and Zotero picks up high quality data.
@mark: I don't think any of the Zotero devs are actively working on translators - I've recently only seen one person contributing (mcburton). I think the idea would be that this gets gradually picked up by the community.
@adamsmith: I'm sorry, You're right. i forget to mention, that it works fine with books and journals. But regarding articles that have been published as an conference-paper it doesnt work properly
for example here: http://www.kubikat.org/mrbh-cgi/kubikat_en.pl?t_idn=ud3710191r
Instead of adding the title of the article, zotero only adds the books name. or can i change that somewhere in the preferences? but ok, its a minor problem...
no you can't change that on Zotero's side - but you could try contacting the maintainer(s) of kubikat - this sounds like the metadata their providing for conference papers might not be correct.
Otherwise someone would have to write a translator - for that the queue is unfortunately long :-)
For me, that site uses the COinS translator & I think 'chrome/content/zotero/xpcom/ingester.js' needs to be improved for conference proceedings. The site uses 'atitle' to encode the paper title and 'btitle' to encode the book title, as recommended in Table 14 of the OpenURL spec. Zotero explicitly uses the btitle for the article title in the translator for proceedings, though & I don't know why.
@mark: I don't think any of the Zotero devs are actively working on translators - I've recently only seen one person contributing (mcburton). I think the idea would be that this gets gradually picked up by the community.
Well if that's the case, I think the process could be much improved. There is no tracking system for requests, no following up if a translator is added or improved, and in general no clear sense on the part of most community members how you actually build or improve a translator (much of the documentation is outdated, Scaffold only works with the 1.0x branch).
It's a bit similar to the development of citation styles (I feel that there is some more community involvement there, but I may be wrong) in that the process is still very technical and arcane, keeping the small number of involved community members busy while there is not enough critical mass infrastructure-wise to really get the ball rolling.
"There is no tracking system for requests, no following up if a translator is added or improved"
A system for better tracking translator requests and issues is on the list of things to do on the website side of things, though so far that is as far as it has gone.
edit: If you'd like to make proposals for how such a system should work and requirements for it, please feel free to start a discussion on the website forum.
I would love to see a translator for Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. There might be one, but if so it never works for me. I get the article symbol to grab the information but when I click on it the import box that appears is always blank, and it stays blank, no matter how long you wait.
I am happy to work on some translators, I'll tackle a few over the next few days, write some easy ones and leave the difficult ones! I've just written a one for Bloomberg news from scratch in a few hours.
I am personally now using Zotero like a web scrapbook, more than just for scholarly papers.
Could I suggest that people who wants translators written, please post 4 or 5 URLs of articles that they feel are representative of that particular site. Please mention which fields are most important and usually present on the site you want (author, date, abstract, whether PDF attachments need to be extracted etc). Typically some fields are easy and some are a pain. It's probably quicker to write lots of basic translators and leave the hard fields for later than obsess over getting every last field from a few sites.
I suggest we (I?) also prioritise those websites which have the highest traffic. I suggest Google pagerank is a good measure.
kaarthur - a draft http://emedicine.medscape.com/ translator is in your email. Please give it a test and let me know if it's working and ready to be submitted to Zotero.
Closing this thread, which dates to 2007 and has become a bit too unwieldy to be useful. As fcheslack mentioned above, a better system for managing translator requests and issues is planned, but in the meantime separate threads would be more helpful.
If you'd like to request a translator, search for an existing forum thread to see if a translator has already been requested and, if you don't find one, start a new thread and include some of the info willsmithorg suggests a few posts up. If you'd just like to add your voice to an existing request, post to the existing thread.
Upgrade Storage
http://preview.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
(e.g.: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie)
http://www.atypon-link.com/AV/toc/dzph/57/4
Is it possible to add an translator for http://www.kubikat.org? That would be very helpful! This catalogue records nearly all books and articles on art in early modern history in all languages.
It was set up by the "Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte in Florenz", the "Bibliotheca Hertziana" in Rom, and the "Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte" in München. It is accessible in multiple languages (for example in english http://www.kubikat.org/mrbh-cgi/kubikat_en.pl or in french http://www.kubikat.org/mrbh-cgi/kubikat_fr.pl).
for example here: http://www.kubikat.org/mrbh-cgi/kubikat_en.pl?t_idn=ud3710191r
Instead of adding the title of the article, zotero only adds the books name. or can i change that somewhere in the preferences? but ok, its a minor problem...
Otherwise someone would have to write a translator - for that the queue is unfortunately long :-)
http://emedicine.medscape.com/
K
It's a bit similar to the development of citation styles (I feel that there is some more community involvement there, but I may be wrong) in that the process is still very technical and arcane, keeping the small number of involved community members busy while there is not enough critical mass infrastructure-wise to really get the ball rolling.
A system for better tracking translator requests and issues is on the list of things to do on the website side of things, though so far that is as far as it has gone.
edit: If you'd like to make proposals for how such a system should work and requirements for it, please feel free to start a discussion on the website forum.
Thanks!!!!
I am personally now using Zotero like a web scrapbook, more than just for scholarly papers.
Could I suggest that people who wants translators written, please post 4 or 5 URLs of articles that they feel are representative of that particular site. Please mention which fields are most important and usually present on the site you want (author, date, abstract, whether PDF attachments need to be extracted etc). Typically some fields are easy and some are a pain. It's probably quicker to write lots of basic translators and leave the hard fields for later than obsess over getting every last field from a few sites.
I suggest we (I?) also prioritise those websites which have the highest traffic. I suggest Google pagerank is a good measure.
If you'd like to request a translator, search for an existing forum thread to see if a translator has already been requested and, if you don't find one, start a new thread and include some of the info willsmithorg suggests a few posts up. If you'd just like to add your voice to an existing request, post to the existing thread.