Movies not being listed as movies....

Christopher Gwyn
Zotero does not consistently correctly list a movie as a movie.

I had noticed this error, and to document it I did an 'advanced search' in our catalog [http://library.cwu.edu/search/X]. I whimsically used the word 'air' as a search term, and limited the results to those with a 'Media Circulation' Location. Of the 200-odd results, 8 were not correctly listed as 'movie'.

It was not difficult to correct those entries in Zotero, but it would have been nice if Zotero had automatically done this correctly.

Does anyone have any guess as to whether this is a metadata error on our end, an error in Zotero, or??????

Thank you.
  • adamsmith
    if it's 8 out of 200 it's likely not Zotero, but your metadata but without the actual items no one will be able to say for certain -
    you can just check the MARC which Zotero is (probably) using yourself - the 007 field should have m or v at the beginning - or you can link to the items in questions and likely someone will be courious enough to take a look.
  • Christopher Gwyn
    That is what I am reflexively suspecting....and I sent a description of the problem to our Cataloging Department. I have noticed the problem occurring with different catalogs, so if the error is on the Catalog side of things it is probably a moderately common error....
  • Christopher Gwyn
    Anyone can replicate my results by doing the same search in our Catalog [http://library.cwu.edu/search/X] and then saving things to Zotero.

    Two examples:
    Does work: http://library.cwu.edu/search~S0?/.b1793657/.b1793657/1%2C1%2C1%2CB/marc~b1793657
    Doesnot work: http://library.cwu.edu/search~S0?/.b1755790/.b1755790/1%2C1%2C1%2CB/marc~b1755790

    The immediately obvious difference to me (based on adamsmith's comment above) is that there is no '007' field in the record that Zotero does not 'correctly' record. If the 007 field is what Zotero is looking at in order to correctly note that the item is a movie then the lack of a 007 field probably explains the problem....
    I'll pass this insight along to our Catalogers and see if the addition assists with the adversity! Thank you adamsmith!
  • ajlyon
    Since I'd rather not go through the 200 results and see which ones are not classified correctly, can you say which ones give the unexpected item type?
  • Christopher Gwyn
    Two examples are noted above.

    'going through the 200 results' was actually very easy _because of the error_. Those items that had correctly transitioned had the little movie icon beside the entry (in the middle Zotero panel), and those eight that did not successfully transition to Zotero had a little book icon beside the entry. The 'does work' example above is one that had a movie icon, the 'doesnot work' had a book icon.

    Each of the 'book icon' items that I looked at the MARC record for did not have a 007 field. Each of the 'movie icon' items that I looked at the MARC record for did have a 007 field. So, unless someone achieves a deeper and more complete understanding about this 'error', I'm inclined to assume that adamsmith was correct in pointing to the 007 field as a suspect....
  • ajlyon
    Sorry -- this thread was sitting open on my machine and I didn't realize you'd already answered the question. Adamsmith is of course correct, and Zotero is merely using the information your library provides it. Talk to cataloging-- those people are usually so delighted to hear that someone is actually using their metadata that they're likely to fix the issue quickly.
  • adamsmith
    The 007 field is where the item type gets set - if it's not there I assume Zotero defaults to book, so yeah, a lack of a 007 field would explain that. And what ajlyon says.
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