Magic Wand "Add Item(s) by Identifier" - Recurrent Lookup Failed

nbuono
I've been using Zotero for several years and pretty consistently I'll be in the middle of adding some sources I'm citing via ISBN-13 and the magic wand tool and Zotero will just stop accepting any new identifiers. I've tried dozens of different identifiers from different sources and this problem just seems to randomly occur. The exact error is this:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u6367638/mvd3oikxcmpz8uqzacse.png

I have tried restarting the computer, reinstalling, checking for updates, looking through old forums, running Zotero as an admin, restarting Zotero, restarting my browser, and I have had no luck in finding a fix to this issue. Fortunately, it goes just as mysteriously as it comes and just randomly starts working again at some point later. But it's normally at least an hour.

Anyone know how to solve this?

Thanks in advance
  • dstillman
    edited 9 days ago
    We'd need to see a Debug ID to say more, but if you're adding large numbers of ISBNs via that function, you might just be getting blocked by WorldCat, one of the sources we use for ISBN metadata. They have fairly strict anti-bot protections.

    If this happens, you can likely just save from worldcat.org instead for ISBNs that appear there.

    DOIs and other identifiers with proper centralized metadata repositories won't have this problem.
  • nbuono
    Thanks for the link and response, here is the debug ID: D1671815125

    Depends on what you mean by large. But I doubt my usage counts as large. I'm doing roughly 20 in most of these error cases.

    Pardon my ineptitude, but I'm not familiar with worldcat.org and I'm not sure how to verify if an identifier has a proper centralized metadata repository..
  • nbuono
    I just went to worldcat.org, cool resource for sure, thank you for bringing it to my attention!

    I found one of the books I was trying to add on there and both ISBNs listed for it still produced the same error..
    Here is the debug ID for that interaction: D282575581
  • dstillman
    edited 8 days ago
    I'm saying to save from worldcat.org with the Zotero Connector, the way you would save from any website. You're aware of that? That, not Add Item by Identifier, is the primary way of saving things to Zotero.

    https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero#via_your_web_browser
  • dstillman
    edited 8 days ago
    Actually, saving from the WorldCat site seems to be broken for me, so that might not work either. It's possible there was a recent site change that broke saving.

    ISBN lookups via Add Item by Identifier that require WorldCat also aren't working for me, so they might have made some broader changes here that are breaking things.

    We'll take a look at both of these.
  • dstillman
    @nbuono: Saving via worldcat.org should now be fixed.
  • nbuono
    Thank you so much! I just tried both functions and they worked like a charm!

    If the issue appears again, I'll let you know, as sometimes it is "fixed" and then reverted later. But it seems to be better now!

    Thank you again.
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