Worldcat.org and two III catalogs not working

This is bad. I need to teach undergrads how easy it is to get citations downloaded to Zotero, but none of the ways we typically look at books is working, all of a sudden.

Problem 1: worldcat.org - I hit the blue book icon, but the only thing that goes in is "AddThis utility frame." No book record.
http://www.worldcat.org/title/caring-for-the-vulnerable-perspectives-in-nursing-theory-practice-and-research/oclc/152795170

Problem 2: my library's catalog, called MERLIN, http://laurel.lso.missouri.edu/. I hit the blue book icon, but the only thing that goes into Zotero is "MERLIN Library Catalog/MU." No book record.
URL: http://laurel.lso.missouri.edu/search~S1?/Yhealth+disparities&searchscope=1&SORT=D/Yhealth+disparities&searchscope=1&SORT=D&Submit=Search&SUBKEY=health disparities/1,252,252,B/frameset&FF=Yhealth+disparities&searchscope=1&SORT=D&4,4,

I'm having no trouble downloading article citations from PubMed or Scopus, but this book thing is a serious problem.
  • Both of those work for me.

    What versions of Firefox and Zotero are you using?
  • Firefox/3.6.13, Zotero 2.0.9
  • Both on an iMac, if that makes any difference.
  • In my video that I made for the undergrads (we're all snowed in here so can't do it live), I got around the book thing by doing a "magic wand" ISBN lookup, which, interestingly, did work. But the worldcat and III problem is still somewhat disturbing.
  • both work fine for me on 2.0.9.
    When you hover over the book icon in the URL bar - what does it say?
    Try disabling your other FF add-ons.
  • The icon by the worldcat item says: "Save to Zotero( Untitled)"
    The icon by the MERLIN item says the same thing.
  • Have you modified your Zotero translators?
  • (Given that no translators bundled with Zotero include the word "Untitled", it seems quite likely that you saved an invalid translator that's triggering on multiple sites.)
  • unless you use custom translators and/or custom styles, use the "reset translators and styles" button in the advanced tab of the Zotero preferences - that should fix this.
    If you use custom translators and/or styles you should make a copy of them first.

    Dan - it seems like we're seeing more people with corrupt translators recently - is there any chance that could be more than coincidence?
  • This is almost certainly something brekhusr did. Zotero itself doesn't display "Untitled" for anything.

    For people with actually corrupted translators, the only way to debug it is for people to zip the translators directory and send it to support@zot....org before resetting. The directory should never become corrupt, so just telling people to reset isn't a good idea.
  • sorry about that - it's just that it has worked as a solution for, I think, about half a dozen cases over the last couple of months and none of those has come back to complain, so it seems like it works - but I'll instruct people to send zips of presumably corrupted translator directories to support@z in the future.
  • It should definitely work, and it's fine to tell people to do it, but we should just make sure we get copies of those directories before they reset them.
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