Add books: Slovak National Library source not working for 2 months

Dear LT staff,

it's been now more than two months that I have been seeing the book adding search failing most of the time when using "Slovak National Library" as the source. But the whole August the search is failing consistently; I have been unable to add one single book from this source – and I am trying it every day or two.

Book names – with or without accents ("Filozofické orchidey", "Pragmatizmus") do not work at all. I know for sure that these books ARE in Slovak National Library – I have added them to my personal LT library in the past using this source, but now the search returns no results.

No error is ever returned, just the »⚠️ No results found for "Pragmatizmus".« message.
The search takes some time (e.g. »Search took 3.655 seconds«) so it does not seem like an error in connection.

What is troubling is that while *most of* ISBN searches I tried fail (8071495964, 8071494585), some of them work. From what I have tested, only those work that I have already added to my library at some point in the past (yes, I am searching using the "Slovak National Library" source, not "Overcat"), but that might be just a coincidence. Nevertheless, direct search using the library system (here: https://chamo.kis3g.sk/) is able to find these books (eg. search for ISBN 8071495964 here: https://chamo.kis3g.sk/search/query?term_1=8071495964&theme=snk).

This is very frustrating, since I am trying to systematically build Slovak philosophical library within LT.
What can be done?

Thank you,
Robert

To the attention of the staff et al. : https://www-snk-sk.translate.goog/sk/domov/14-o-kniznici.html?start=14&_x_tr...

Only took a cursory look, but seems like they may have moved to Koha? And access may be payment-based?

>2 davidgn:
From what I could gather based on that page, I would say it's related to their own (custom-developed?) library-system for small- and medium-sized libraries, which is payed. But as far as I can see, there's no mention of any policy change to their own (that is, Slovak National Library's) catalogue (e.g. becoming payed).

I am not an expert in this field, but I can help with translating from Slovak, if needed

As far as I can tell from the online catalog, SNK is still Virtua which is an Innovative product.

It could the library locked down access to the catalog for a fee, SNK locked down access to permitted sites only, or SNK has stopped offering public access via z39.50.

The LTG page for SNK was edited in Nov 2021 and shows they still use Virtua (though the online catalog link is out of date, oddly). https://librarytechnology.org/library/3409/

Thanks for the report. It sounds like someone needs to reach out to SNK directly to see what's up, right? I can try.

Okay, so their connection details have not changed.

They did comment on Koha, but I'm not sure I understand completely what they're saying (language barrier?):

I read the topic and someone has mention koha. In koha we have only authorities, because Virtua can't distributing authorities with Z39.50

Although I'm seeing a successful connection, I'm not getting results. Maybe the fixes ccatalfo has ready to push (after some testing) will help.

>6 kristilabrie:
If the message is in Slovak, you can just post the original and I will translate that for you ;-)
Ah, or maybe THEY are trying to speak in English? Well, that's worse then :D

>7 FurloSK: Hah, yes, the latter! No worries! I think ccatalfo's fix will do what we need, just going to do some final testing today before pushing.

>6 kristilabrie: >7 FurloSK: Authorities as in the Koha term: https://koha-community.org/manual/16.11/html/ch06s03.html

It is usually used to connect various versions of the same name/place (among other things). Different system do this differently (in LT our Author combining achieves the same essentially for authors for example).

So it does make sense in English, albeit somewhat broken:) From the sounds of it, their records are actually hosted in two different systems and their front ends are touching both (one for the authorities, one for the rest).

>9 AnnieMod: Ahhh, I see. Thanks for the explanation!

Thanks very much for all who worked in this, the problem seems to be fixed by now.

Just one more question: this specific source ("Slovak National Library") does not work at all when searching by ISBN number of books. As far as I know, this has been the case for at least last 5 years, but is there any chance that this could be fixed? Is it a problem on LT side, or Slovak National Library side?

More specifically, the search terms are only found when they are present in book title, but nothing else. Searching publisher names, authors, years will find nothing. The cases with ISBNs are strange, because they return error (»⚠️ The search has failed.« message).

The library has a system for advanced search (e.g. a:AUTHOR_NAME, t:BOOK_TITLE) and I was able to find the book "Dielo" from author named "Bajza" using search term "t:Dielo AND a:Bajza" directly in library – see here:
https://chamo.kis3g.sk/search/query?term_1=t:Dielo+AND+a:Bajza&theme=snk
But this does NOT work when writing the same in LibraryThing "Add Books" search query.

It is problematic to find such books, because "Dielo" is very generic, it stands for "Works" in English, which returns 6,087 results. And since I am unable to narrow the search by additional fields, its practically impossible to add this specific book (and many more).

Any hint of what could I do?
Thanks, Robert

>11 FurloSK: Looking at the configuration for the Slovak National Library as a source, the search is only for titles. That is intentional.

For LT staff: Possibly, the search config could be changed for an anything/anywhere search. The SNL database z39.50 connection uses 1035 and not 1016.

Documentation: https://www.kis3g.sk/dokumenty/Z3950Attribute2006_04.html

hey, any update on this? Would it be possible to add other fields to search?

For LT staff:

I just tested the source in the add sources page and I'm getting "Error: Bib1 Error: Timeout-Expired (5s)"
If I try taking out the "ti" index I get "Error: Bib1 Error: 7 Too many truncated words -- v3 addinfo '(backend=127.0.0.1:9999/Default)'

Hello again, for unknown reason, some queries are constantly giving me »⚠️ The search has failed.« error message. For example, try searching for "Básnické dielo" (without quotes) or "Vojtech Mihálik". I am trying to search for this for hours today > no luck.

I'm seeing a "Error: Bib1 Error: Timeout-Expired (5s)" error message on our end when testing searches on this source. Let me pass that along to ccatalfo (for tomorrow) and see if there's anything we can do on our end.

Sorry for pestering again, but I have another problem, again with this same source – Slovak National Library. Searching for "O zákonoch" returns 99 results, but clicking on "next" link reloads the very same results. Can someone reproduce the problem, please?

Yes, I see the same thing. If I search for something else like "Bible" the "next" link seems to work as expected, though. So it looks like the library source misbehaves in a rather funny way.

The sources "National Bibliographic Information Network (Taiwan)" & "Synergy of Metadata Resources in Taiwan (SMRT)" also have the same problem mentioned in #17.

>19 HsuBattery: Slovak National Library works fine with "Bible" and not with "O zákonoch", so I think you should give an example that fails with the two Taiwan sources.

>17 FurloSK: >20 bnielsen:
If the result count > 100, "next" works fine
kw: 織田信奈
page 1

page 2


If the result count is less than 100, "next" won't work
kw: 織田信奈的野望
page 1

page 2

hm, the bug still persists, so it wasn't just a temporary glitch.

Any info on what could be done with this problem?

Which bug? The original one for Slovak National Library or the one that should have gotten a new bug post for "National Bibliographic Information Network (Taiwan)" & "Synergy of Metadata Resources in Taiwan (SMRT)"?

>23 lesmel:
well, the bug I posted above – the original one for Slovak National Library.
I'm not really interested in Taiwan databases and you are right that they a new bug post should have been created for them. I guess the poster sent them here because he thought it might be the same bug.