Unable to find book by 10-digit LCCN

I tried to add this book to my library from the Library of Congress: https://lccn.loc.gov/2004047194. I selected the Library of Congress and entered the LCCN, but the search page reported: No results found for "2004047194".

I was able to find the record when searching by ISBN 9781583940938.

>1 gcthomas:
I can confirm that LCCN 2004047194 gives no result when trying to add a book from the LoC.

It's not the way that I usually add books but I use the LoC a lot and so have looked at what happens if I try 'adding' a few books using LCCN from my catalogue.

The following LCCN all found the correct book: 72097666, 99087453, 2004105058, 2008299360, 2001002573, 2011039300, 2012019332, 2013036593, 2013901848, 2014453534, 2015331197, 2016956110, 2017957405, 2017963995, 2018957274, 2019013853, 2019472615, 2020366440, 2020399424

The following LCCN reported no book found: 2016939427 (ISBN 9783319304311). This book was added to my catalogue via the LoC.

I'm not sure what this shows, apart from a 10% failure rate, but I hope it helps someone sort out what's going wrong.

I wonder if the LCCN 2004047194 is in the same field as the ones that succeed?
I tried connecting directly to lx2.loc.gov:210/lcdb with a z39.50 client, and

LCCN 72097666 gives a record with
010 $a 72097666
020 $a 0226345483
035 $9 (DLC) 72097666
040 $a DLC $c DLC $d DLC
...

while 2004047194 gives a record with
010 $a 2004047194
020 $a 1583940936 (pbk.)
040 $a DLC $c DLC $d DLC

but 2017957405 gives a record with
010 $a 2017957405
020 $a 9781487001889
040 $a DLC $b eng $e rda $c DLC
...

so that didn't help us :-)

(I was guessing that maybe LT searched in field 035, thus requiring it to appear like in 72097666. But 2004047194 and 2017957405 both have it only in 010 and 2004047194 can't be found but 2017957405 can.)

So I'm puzzled. We need to summon one of the LT admins.

This technically isn't a bug, but I'll let the developers come back and confirm.

We search by title, author, or ISBN. Don't search by LCCN.

>4 gilroy: Yes, but the explanatory text under the search box includes "LC card number"

>5 rodneyvc: Been so long since I added books through the Add Book page, I'd forgotten that.

Maybe it needs to be prefaced?
LCCN:{number} ?

>4 gilroy:
It reminds me that there are currently other problems and inconsistencies with LoC searches. Searching the LoC by ISBN can currently give different results to searching by title, as reported in https://www.librarything.com/topic/323055

Books catalogued from LoC when searching by ISBN usually lose any accented characters that are in the data, wheras books catalogued by title don't and, having checked, neither do books catalogued by LCCN. Several examples are noted in the 323055 bug report, here's another example:
ISBN 273849319X
Ethiopie-Erythrée : frères ennemis de la Corne de l'Afrique by Fabienne Le Houérou
LCCN 00398533
(by ISBN gives Ethiopie-Erythr : fres ennemis de la Corne de l'Afrique by Fabienne Le Houou)

But not always. For instance:
ISBN 9781498536417
Inequalities and conflicts in modern and contemporary African history : a comparative perspective by Jan Záhořík
LCCN 2018044013
(gives the author's name correctly when searched by ISBN)

Something's not quite right somewhere...

AFAIK LT doesn't perform the search, it just passes on the search string to the library, in this case the LoC. Theoretically every library could have a different format for their search string but luckily it seems that a bare ISBN or Title works in general. But if there's a problem with LoC searches then there might not be anything that LT can do about it.

Further to >8 jjwilson61: Be aware that the facilities that LT use to search any particular library are not necessarily the facilities that library exposes on its website for general use. So, even if a search you perform at a LoC site using LCCN works, the same search as done by LT could fail, and there still might not be anything LT can do about it.

>9 Foretopman: Correct. But I used the same access in >3 bnielsen: as LT does, so it should be fixable on the LT side.

Noted this to developers to take a look. I am seeing the LCCN in the record details on LoC's Add books search result (when searching by ISBN), for what it's worth.

Hi all - thanks for the heads up and the notes, etc. I will dig in to see what exactly LT is doing in these cases.

Bump, reported again at https://www.librarything.com/topic/345062

Bumping this, as I have received two additional email reports of difficulty searching via LCCN. In addition, the members report general trouble searching, when using LoC as a source.

Another report: https://www.librarything.com/topic/348946#8081644

Reported in Nov 2022: https://www.librarything.com/topic/345775

Books with only card number and no ISBN, and books having both, can be found using Overcat. I just discovered this.
I discovered also that if you type the title instead of the card number you`ll get the result.
LCC: Title only works.
Overcat: LCC card number works, and returns LCC result in addition to results from other sources as well.

A thread exists here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/348982

Update: Some LCC card numbers/ISBNs return multiple LCC results for the single same book.

The problems with importing books via LCC seem to be getting worse. None of the LCCN checked to be working in >2 newcrossbooks: now work.

While I managed to import records for a magazine by searching for the title Tenśāʼé today, LT has not managed to find any of the following magazine titles using LCC as a source:
Maʻedot (LCCN - 2007206501)
Malakat (LCCN - sf 93071835)
Ḥamara ṣedeq (LCCN - 2001295603)

And, oddly, the magazine title Yaḥeṡānāt demṡ : yaḥeṡānāt dahnenat ṭebaqānā ṭeqāt takalākāy māh̲bar maṣeḥét = Children's voice : the newsletter of ANPPCAN--Ethiopia (LCCN - 2002375664) is not found when searching for Yaḥeṡānāt, or 2002375664, but is found when searching for Children's voice.

>17 newcrossbooks: And, oddly, the magazine title Yaḥeṡānāt demṡ : yaḥeṡānāt dahnenat ṭebaqānā ṭeqāt takalākāy māh̲bar maṣeḥét = Children's voice : the newsletter of ANPPCAN--Ethiopia (LCCN - 2002375664) is not found when searching for Yaḥeṡānāt, or 2002375664, but is found when searching for Children's voice.

I don't think this is surprising at all, although it's unfortunate. I can't speak to the LCCN, but "Yaḥeṡānāt" contains four extended-character-set characters. Each of which can be generated in either of two ways: either by using the direct character (ḥ, ṡ, ā) or by using what are called "combining diacriticals" -- or by omitting the diacritical. That's 27 different ways to enter that single word (81 ways, if you count the two instances of ā as independent), and no way of knowing which might be in the database. :-(

Looking up "Children's voice," it appears that the item that turned up uses the same extended characters as you did, but there are a lot of letters in the other words that might not be the same. In my experience, searching on extended-character-set letters is always chancy, and the more unusual the language, the chancier it is. "Children's voice" probably worked because it has no extended-character-set characters.

I have no advice on the LCCN, but if you conduct a regular search and it doesn't work, it's always a good idea to try a search for only those words without diacriticals.

>18 waltzmn: Thanks, and that's one of the reasons I also searched for "Children's Voice". But the LT search doesn't even find "dahnenat" from the title, which has no extended set characters.
Similarly the title "Malakat" has no extended set characters.
And for a title like "Maʻedot" a search for "Maedot" used to work...

>17 newcrossbooks: The problems with importing books via LCC seem to be getting worse
Considering it was never marked as fixed, it's still in the same state it's always been -- broken. Yes, admin have noted it needs work, but they haven't noted a fix.

Any suggestions for retrieving LC call numbers using a citation matcher outside LT? Like, first author, year, title, that could fuzzy-match on LC collection records and return the call number?

>21 InfoChallenges: It's not a citation matcher; but this does pretty much what you want: http://classify.oclc.org/classify2/ -- search a title (there's more than one search, actually), you get a results list (if there's a single hit you skip to the exact record page), click a result, you get the most frequent LCC and/or DDC, as well as all the call numbers used in the OCLC system.

Cool, thanks!

Potentially related: a book cannot be found by title, title/author, ISBN, LCCN, etc... but can be found by searching the author's name only. https://www.librarything.com/topic/356182

As a brand new user, this was the first thing I encountered when trying to add my first book via Library of Congress catalog card number. I grabbed the closest book to me and tried that. Printed as 59-13994, I could only get it to return from the LoC's own site by formatting as 59013994 (permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/59013994). Under no circumstance could I get a result searching from Library of Congress via "Add books" (https://www.librarything.com/addbooks). We have a lot of pre-ISBN books, and the idea of searching by author/title for a work that's already been catalogued with a unique identifier -- and for which explicit guidance seems to exist (ex. https://www.loc.gov/marc/lccn.html, https://www.loc.gov/marc/lccn_structure.html) -- is not inspiring. Could I volunteer my time to help fix this?

>25 nandm: You might be able to get many LoC records by searching the LCCN within the Overcat source, instead (it's our database of hundreds of libraries including LoC). I was able to find the record you need by searching Overcat for 59013994, at least, and there's a lot of cached results that should help move the needle for you. Hopefully we'll be able to dedicate some serious bug-cleanup time within the next few months!

Another report: https://www.librarything.com/topic/357552

I'm glad I found this thread. For (months? longer?) I've been having an issue adding books using the Library of Congress number, specifically the type like this:

73-9037

In the past I dismissed it as possibly being an "obscure" book that missed system capture for whatever reason. But the example above is "Carrie" by Stephen King, one of the most popular books of the 2nd half of the 20th century. There's no reason why it shouldn't come up with a LoC search.

(Also, if you run a search using the number above, the message returned is: "No results found for "73009037"" But--I didn't search with "73009037" . . . I searched with "73-9037" -- This format has worked in the past).

Yes, the book can be found by searching with title, author, etc. But for older, pre-ISBN books, if I have an LoC number I like to be able to use that number to be sure to find the specific edition I wish to add.

Why are their so many search options not functioning properly? Thanks.

>28 SpacemanSpiff: What source/s are you searching with that number? I'm able to find Carrie from Overcat by searching "73-9037", for what it's worth.

>28 SpacemanSpiff: Why are their so many search options not functioning properly? Thanks.

One of the problems is that there are so many sources and you need someone to contact them if something stops working. Or if you are lucky, you can maybe change something on the LT side. So it's like maintaining a list of many, many email addresses. There is always one broken, even if you just fixed all the errors :-)

So I'm more amazed that so many of them are sort of functioning.

Bump. The LoC is still not bringing results back for LCCN searches, although it looks "successful" on our end (just no results). Additionally, Overcat seems to be bringing results back from the LoC on LCCN searches, where the same search from the LoC brings back nothing.

Other searches are spotty: author name and ISBN occasionally bring back results, not usually LCCN or title.

Latest example, looking for The Book of Goose, by Yiyun Li:
- LCCN: 2022022703: no results on this number
- ISBN: 9781250872418: no results on this number (but after finding the LoC's record in Overcat, searching for ISBN 9780374606343 does work).
- The Book of Goose: no results on this title search
- Yiyun Li: the desired book is on the 2nd page of results.

Perhaps this follow problem is linked :

When i search this ISBN/EAN in LBThing (general search)or and in my library, it's indicated "No book.... "

I try with 9782355047091

https://www.librarything.fr/work/32497742/summary/266970844
(it was already in my library)

It's a pb cause i added this book a second time before errase

I am also having difficulty pulling / adding from Library of Congress. I even tried to find a book I added in the past from Library of Congress, and LT is not finding the title (I previously added to my library) via Library of Congress. I would prefer to pull / add from L of C rather than Amazon if and when possible.

WHEN is this issue going to be fixed??? I found this thread and added my voice to the list six months ago. It's been 3 & 1/2 years since initially reported (in this thread). I've been a member almost 18 years and can CONFIRM that this functionality used to work. How hard can it be to remedy what went wrong? It's not like you have to build functionality from scratch.

Just tried to add this book using the Library of Congress option:
58-9379

Still not working. Frustrating.

>34 SpacemanSpiff: LCCN is working on Overcat, at least. I get 'search failed' probably more than half the time, but if I keep clicking it eventually comes up — usually with LoC as the first or second result. I added 20 books this way just yesterday.

>34 SpacemanSpiff: I'll see what our bandwidth is on being able to dive further into this in the near future. Sorry for the trouble.

In the meantime, as >35 GraceCollection: mentions, you can search LCCN on Overcat and catalog LoC's record if listed. I hope this helps.

Taking a look at >34 SpacemanSpiff:'s example, I found 58-9379 in Overcat, and inspected the LoC's record: they have LCCN 58009379 listed. I tried searching 58009379 in LoC on "Add books" and still failed to find results. The same search (58009379) works on the LoC website ( https://catalog.loc.gov/ ).

NB: I'm seeing a couple of different Advanced Search options on LoC catalog, K010 for LCCN only and KNUM for LCCN-ISBN-ISSN... not sure if that's anything worth looking at.