Quite a few of my books are not found by ISBN. Some of them, are from obscure Czech publishers, but even a USD 50 Electrician’s handbook (9783808530344) is not found. At the same time, most of my Czech books can be found, and most of the not-found books can be found when scanned in Bookshelf app.
The fact that the information about those books is available online but I’m made to add them manually is frustrating.
What are some principles of the search algorithm and underlying metadata database? What reasonable expectation should I have?
Usually users get a very high hitrate, especially on US books, but we are connected to libraries world wide. Coverage is very high for ISBN searches we see in our stats.
Could you send me like 10 ISBNs from the US you couldn’t find? I’m curious about them.
I’m not sure what you mean by principles of the search algorithm though.
CLZ Books searches our own online Core database. The Core database that we maintain is connected to libraries world wide. Is that what you’re looking for?
Thank you for the reply. I wasn’t entirely clear that my library is almost entirely Czech. My hitrate is around 85%. (On top of that, I have plenty of old books without any ISBN at all, but that’s another story.)
For most of the US books I have, I noticed significantly faster response. Most of the Czech books took some time, 15 % of all ISBNs were not found at all (all of them Czech). That lead me to believe the search has more layers and while it doesn’t give up on readers outside the Anglosphere, the likelihood of incomplete data grows.
The Bookshelf app gave me better results, Libib even worse.
As sb. who knows nothing about this, I hoped there would be some open-source world-wide database based on standardized national databases. But it seems to be rather individual effort of those who aggreate such data with mixed results.
If the search with us takes longer, the Core database does indeed search through international public libraries to try and find the book anyway - and we then store it in Core as well so the next person can find it a lot faster. We’re doing lots of ‘smart’ things when you search an ISBN to get you the best possible hitrate.
I’m curious about the Bookshelf app though. Could you send me some ISBNs you couldn’t find with us, but could find with Bookshelf? Maybe we can make our system better.