The library catalog server can be specified by a command-line option, with the default server being the world's largest library catalog, the US Library of Congress.
ANSI/NISO Standard Z39.50-1995 and ISO Standard 23950:1998 ``Information and documentation --- Information retrieval (Z39.50) --- Application service definition and protocol specification'' define a library catalog protocol that allows client programs to communicate with library catalog servers around the world, and retrieve data in a small number of different formats, notably USMARC (United States MAchine-Readable Cataloging) and SUTRS (Simple Unstructured Text Record Syntax).
Because of its frequency of use, this option may be abbreviated to a single letter, even though it shares a two-character prefix with another option.
\s-2http://www.indexdata.dk/targettest/\s+2
This option can be specified as many times as needed, and all specified servers are accumulated into a master list that is searched on completion of command-line processing.
In this list, vertical bars separate alternatives, and asterisk matches any word with that prefix:
\s-2
ALL | A* All Z39.50 servers known to cattobib
NATIONAL | N* National libraries and union catalogs
alberta | ab University of Alberta
amherst | umass University of Massachusetts, Amherst
amicus | ca National Library of Canada
bibsys Norwegian Union Catalog
bne | es National Library of Spain
bnp | pt National Library of Portugal
boulder | co University of Colorado, Boulder
british | br British Library
calgary University of Calgary
columbia | cu Columbia University
congress | lc | loc US Library of Congress
copac | uk COPAC (union of 24 research-university
catalogs in the UK and Ireland)
denmark | dk Royal Library of Denmark
dsb | dsl Danish State Library
duke Duke University
florida | fl Florida Center for Library Automation
gbv German Union Catalog
marriott | ut University of Utah Marriott Library
melbourne University of Melbourne
melvyl | cal University of California MELVYL catalog
minn* | mn University of Minnesota
mit Massachusetts Institute of Technology
newyork | ny New York University
nla | au National Library of Australia
nlm | nih National Library of Medicine (US)
nlnz | nz National Library of New Zealand
nls National Library of Scotland
norway | no National Library of Norway
nsw | unsw University of New South Wales
odense | sdu University of Southern Denmark
oxford | ox* Oxford University
poland | pl National Library of Poland
rlg Research Libraries Group
sudoc | abes | fr French Union Catalog
sweden | se National Library of Sweden
texas | tx University of Texas at Austin
toronto University of Toronto
usc University of Southern California\s+2
A later section provides information about representing accented characters in searches of the catalog of the National Library of Poland.
The option name may be abbreviated to a single letter.
\s-2% cattobib 1-57586-011-2
%% Searching [z3950.loc.gov:7090/Voyager] for [1575860112]: flags = [@attr 1=7]
@Book{Knuth:1999:DT,
author = "Donald Ervin Knuth",
title = "Digital typography",
volume = "78",
publisher = "CSLI Publications",
address = "Stanford, Calif.",
pages = "xv + 685",
year = "1999",
ISBN = "1-57586-011-2 (cloth), 1-57586-010-4 (paperback)",
ISBN-13 = "978-1-57586-011-4 (cloth), 978-1-57586-010-7 (paperback)",
LCCN = "Z249.3 .K59 1999",
bibdate = "Wed Jun 22 18:49:36 2005",
bibsource = "z3950.loc.gov:7090/Voyager",
series = "CSLI lecture notes",
URL = "ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg/;
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/cam029/98027331.html;
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/cam022/98027331.html",
acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
subject = "Printing; Data processing; Computerized typesetting;
Computer fonts; TeX (Computer file); METAFONT",
}\s+2
Remark: The ISBN is a unique identifier assigned to books published throughout the world since about 1972. It consists of ten decimal digits, the last of which may also be the letter X, divided into four hyphen- (or rarely, space-) separated parts: country or language, publisher, book number within the publisher, and a final check digit that can be used to detect invalid ISBNs.
Country/language groups 0 and 1 are English, 2 is French, 3 is German, 4 is Japanese, 5 is Russian, and so on. The Republic of Srpska (1996 population about 1.4 million people) is 99938.
Large publishers have small numbers (e.g., Collins is 00, McGraw-Hill is 07, and Prentice-Hall is 13), and small publishers have big numbers (e.g., Peachpit Press is 938151 and Personal TeX is 9631044).
When a publisher exhausts its range of book numbers, it gets a new publisher number: for example, O'Reilly Media Inc. is assigned publisher numbers 937175, 56592, and 596.
Because the 10-digit ISBN numbers are rapidly being exhausted, effective 1-Jan-2007, they will no longer be issued, and instead are to be replaced by new 13-digit values based on the European Article Numbering (EAN) system. The name for the new system is ISBN-13, and such values are also EAN values.
From version 0.02, cattobib output includes both ISBN(-10) and ISBN-13 data, since the latter are beginning to appear in some online bookstore and library catalogs, and some publishers now print them both with the back-cover bar code.
ISBN-13 translations of ISBN-10 data are handled automatically by the biborder(1) utility, and consist of the prefix 978- followed by the first 9 digits of the ISBN-10 value with the same (optional) hyphenation as before, followed by a hyphen and a new check digit. The latter is computed by a different algorithm, and will not in general match the tenth digit (the check digit) of the ISBN-10 value.
Search the default Z39.50 server for a book by its title:
\s-2% cattobib --title 'Digital Typography Sourcebook'
%% Searching [z3950.loc.gov:7090/Voyager] for [Digital Typography Sourcebook]: flags = []
@Book{Bryan:1996:DTS,
author = "Marvin Bryan",
title = "The digital typography sourcebook",
publisher = "Wiley",
address = "New York",
pages = "xxiv + 384, 3",
year = "1996",
ISBN = "0-471-14811-3 (paper/CD-ROM)",
ISBN-13 = "978-0-471-14811-1",
LCCN = "Z250.7 .B79 1996",
bibdate = "Wed Jun 22 18:49:36 2005",
bibsource = "z3950.loc.gov:7090/Voyager",
URL = "ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg/;
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bios/wiley047/96013161.html;
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/wiley033/96013161.html;
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/onix04/96013161.html",
acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
subject = "Computer fonts",
}\s+2
Search the British Library for the same book:
\s-2% cattobib --server br --title 'Digital Typography Sourcebook'
%% Searching [z3950cat.bl.uk:9909/BLAC] for [Digital Typography Sourcebook]: flags = []
%% IGNORED: Number of hits: 1, setno 1
...
@Book{Bryan:1997:DTS,
author = "Marvin Bryan",
title = "The digital typography sourcebook",
publisher = "Wiley",
address = "New York ; Chichester",
pages = "xxiv + 384",
year = "1997",
ISBN = "0-471-14811-3 (paperback)",
ISBN-13 = "978-0-471-14811-1",
bibdate = "Wed Jun 22 18:49:36 2005",
acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
subject = "Computer fonts",
}\s+2
Search the National Library of Australia for two books by ISBN:
\s-2% cattobib -q --server au --ISBN 0-06-621285-5 0-19-860702-4
@Book{Winchester:2003:KDW,
author = "Simon Winchester",
title = "Krakatoa: the day the world exploded, 27 August 1883",
publisher = "HarperCollins Publishers",
address = "New York",
pages = "xvi + 416",
year = "2003",
ISBN = "0-06-621285-5",
ISBN-13 = "978-0-06-621285-2",
bibdate = "Wed Jun 22 18:49:36 2005",
bibsource = "catalogue.nla.gov.au:7090/Voyager",
acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
remark = "Includes bibliographical references and index.",
subject = "Natural disasters; Indonesia; Krakatoa; Social
aspects; Volcanoes; Indonesia; Krakatoa; Krakatoa
(Indonesia); Eruption, 1883",
usmarc-019 = "019 1 $a 24669279",
usmarc-043 = "043 $a a-io---",
usmarc-250 = "250 $a 1st U.S. ed.",
usmarc-984 = "984 $a ANL $c YY 551.2109598 W759",
}
@Book{Winchester:2003:MES,
author = "Simon Winchester",
title = "The meaning of everything: the story of the Oxford
English Dictionary",
publisher = "Oxford University Press",
address = "Oxford",
pages = "xxv + 260",
year = "2003",
ISBN = "0-19-860702-4 (hbk.), 0-19-860702-4 (hbk.)",
ISBN-13 = "978-0-19-860702-1 (hbk.), 978-0-19-860702-1 (hbk.)",
bibdate = "Wed Jun 22 18:49:36 2005",
bibsource = "catalogue.nla.gov.au:7090/Voyager",
price = "No price",
acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
remark = "Includes ndex.",
subject = "Oxford English dictionary; Lexicology; History",
usmarc-019 = "019 1 $a 25073662",
}\s+2
cattobib handles translation to TeX of just the parts of that character set that are needed for the Polish accented letters. Input search strings are, however, not in any standard encoding, but instead require an awkward and idiosyncratic representation of the 22 accented letters:ftp://dkuug.dk/i18n/charmaps/117
{834}A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH ACUTE
{834}C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH ACUTE
{834}E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH ACUTE
{834}N LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH ACUTE
{834}O LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH ACUTE
{834}S LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S WITH ACUTE
{834}Z LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z WITH ACUTE
{834}a LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE
{834}c LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH ACUTE
{834}e LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE
{834}n LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH ACUTE
{834}o LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH ACUTE
{834}s LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH ACUTE
{834}z LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH ACUTE
{839}Z LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z WITH DOT ABOVE
{839}z LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH DOT ABOVE
{846}A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH OGONEK
{846}E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH OGONEK
{846}a LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH OGONEK
{846}e LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH OGONEK
{888} LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L WITH STROKE
{888} LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH STROKE
Notice that the
same
input encoding is used for both lowercase and uppercase l-with-stroke.
The prefix {834} represents the acute accent, {839} the
dot accent, and {846} the ogonek (a hook accent attached near
the lower right corner of the letter). Pictures of all of these
accented letters are available on the Web at
http://www.eki.ee/letter/chardata.cgi?lang=pl+Polish&script=latin
Thus, to search for the author name represented in TeX as Bie{\'n}, use the command
cattobib --server pl --author "Bie{834}n"
For the title represented in TeX as Wi{\k{e}}{\'z}niowie Moskwy,
use the command
cattobib --server pl --title "Wi{846}e{834}zniowie Moskwy"
It would of course be much easier for users to allow matches of
unaccented letters with accented ones, but that feature is not
supported by the library catalog Z39.50 server. Instead,
cattobib
provides a convenient alternative: TeX markup for the Polish
accented letters is silently translated to the form needed for the
National Library of Poland. You can then write the sample search
commands as:
cattobib --server pl --author "Bie{\'n}"
cattobib --server pl --title "Wi{\k{e}}{\'z}niowie Moskwy"
Outer braces surrounding accented letters may be omitted: both
{\k{a}} and \k{a} are recognized, as are {\'z},
\'z, {\.z}, \.z, and so on.
- completely wrong author lists;
- duplicated records, sometimes with minor variations;
- faulty title capitalization;
- incomplete, inaccurate, or missing page numbers;
- incorrect author order;
- mangled and missing accents;
- off-by-one copyright years;
- truncated author lists and titles;
- ...
The best advice to the user is to search three or more catalogs for the same data, and then merge the results, using a majority vote to resolve discrepancies.
When multiple catalogs provide the same data, it may indicate that the data are likely to be reliable. However, the user is warned that libraries around the world share cataloging data, so there may not be as much data independence as might appear from geographically-distant catalogs.
While the conversion of USMARC and SUTRS markup to BibTeX works reasonably well, there are many catalog record types that are not converted. When they are known not to be useful in BibTeX entries, they are silently discarded. Otherwise, cattobib preserves them as additional key/value pairs, such as the usmarc-nnn keys in the BibTeX output in the EXAMPLES section, or else complains about them in diagnostic messages.
cattobib produces only BibTeX @Book{...} entries, even for conference proceedings, for which a @Proceedings{...} entry is required. Library catalog information often does not distinguish between these document types, so the user must convert such entries.
A certain amount of manual cleanup of the BibTeX output is almost always necessary.
Nelson H. F. Beebe University of Utah Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB 155 S 1400 E RM 233 Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090 Tel: +1 801 581 5254 FAX: +1 801 581 4148 Email: beebe@math.utah.edu, beebe@acm.org, beebe@computer.org WWW URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe