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canidlogic / zenlib

Simple library management system
MIT License
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Missing ISBN number #9

Closed canidlogic closed 3 years ago

canidlogic commented 3 years ago

Querying for ISBN 978-1-59030-408-2 doesn't work with ISBNdb, returning an invalid ISBN error.

Corresponds to book "Each Moment is the Universe." Can be found in WorldCat.

canidlogic commented 3 years ago

Workaround: go to worldcat.org/advancedsearch and perform an ISBN search for the indicated ISBN. The book comes up in the result page, and for that entry there is a different ISBN number which then is recognized.

Unfortunately, I'm not able to get API access to WorldCat since I'm not at a qualifying institution. Maybe it's possible though to run the ISBN search automatically using the HTTP GET syntax on the address bar at WorldCat after running the advanced search, then scraping the results for <a href="/title/[...]/oclc/.../ to get to the description page:

https://www.worldcat.org/title/each-moment-is-the-universe-zen-and-the-way-of-being-time/oclc/769817560

Once you get that, you can scrape for ISBN: and then the next will have ISBN numbers. Those ISBN numbers do show up in the ISBNdb database.

canidlogic commented 3 years ago

Actually, ISBNdb has a way of reporting missing ISBN numbers.

You can try the ISBN search for that number on the main page. It then reports the number is not found. And on that not found page, there is a link to report a missing ISBN number.

This is not an actual bug, but rather just a missing entry in the ISBNdb database, which is under third-party control. Therefore, closing this bug.