Import from Library of Congress

[shades]

I have been adding books to my database by using Online search and import from Library of Congress. However, I have noticed a consistent problem that I have not been able to resolve.

There is always a period after the authors name and there is always a space before the colon. See the attachment.

My method had been manual. Open every reference. That’s fine if only 5-10, but now there are hundreds.

What am I missing?

Thanks

[Jon]

That's the way the Library of Congress exports them (see for yourself in the MARC record shown below the online search list -- that's what Bookends is actually parsing). The period after the name is harmless, Bookends should ignore it when formatting. As for the colon, you can periodically do a Global Find/Replace in the title field and replace " :" with ":". I don't know if the LOC actually has any control over the MARC output (I assume they do, but I don't know that). If they do, perhaps they could change the colon spacing if people requested it.

Jon
Sonny Software

[shades]

That's the way the Library of Congress exports them (see for yourself in the MARC record shown below the online search list -- that's what Bookends is actually parsing). The period after the name is harmless, Bookends should ignore it when formatting.

Thanks, Jon. Unfortunately, it seems that Bookends is including the period. Of course, if the middle initial of the author is include, then the period would be expected and used. But without that, the period nevertheless does appear.

I will try to work through this again and see what I can find I am doing wrong, then.

[Jon]

You're doing nothing wrong. But the trailing period doesn't matter. If you find it does, please contact tech support off-forum and we'll work it out.

Jon
Sonny Software

[ozean]

I also found myself frequently thinking if I should make an enhancement request to Jon concerning the trailing period that is output by a few libraries, as I find it tedious to remove and (at least) visually confusing – so much that I will always remove it by hand, which takes a bit of time. So I guess I would also welcome some kind of auto-cleanup of the LOC MARC output, if that doesn't cause problems in other cases…

This is not a feature that is particularly high on my wish-list though

Regarding the colon: I have actually started to use this as the default for all entries – separate main title and subtitle by a colon with a space before and after. One reason that I started to do this is to work against the mix of tons of different ways of separating main and sub title (and I also had the impression that even the publishers themselves don't really care which separator is used). The space-colon-space seems to be a standard way of handling this that is used by several important actors (Library of Congress, the DIN-1505 standard, etc.) and I find it easy to use and recognize

[Jon]

I also found myself frequently thinking if I should make an enhancement request to Jon concerning the trailing period that is output by a few libraries, as I find it tedious to remove and (at least) visually confusing – so much that I will always remove it by hand, which takes a bit of time. So I guess I would also welcome some kind of auto-cleanup of the LOC MARC output, if that doesn't cause problems in other cases…

I've refrained from cleaning up MARC records because I'm afraid of doing more harm than good. For example, if Bookends assumed the trailing period was incorrect, a name like this

Smith, L.C.

would be imported as

Smith, L.C

which would be worse than the current import. And of course the LOC could change the way it emits names at any time, and in fact it might be different right now depending on the record type or source. So Bookends imports what is offered. Again, although it might be a bit distracting to look at, the formatter will ignore it.

Jon
Sonny Software