Adding New Books Connection Fails

Trying to add some books and every time I try (with all sources) I get connection failed.

Or it says "no results found" which in this case is impossible because these are well known writers with multiple books and nothing comes up with either the title or the author.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/369957
They've been having server problems all weekend.

>3 gilroy: Thanks for the heads up. I'll just wait.

Sorry for the trouble! I'll update this bug report when we have something (and if I'm out, you may see an update at https://www.librarything.com/topic/369957 instead).

We have Overcat (and library sources) back up per https://www.librarything.com/topic/369957#8815718, but we're still seeing slowness (from something related). Working on it.

Just adding a note that Israel Union List was on the list of complaints as of Wednesday. I just ran a successful search in it, so I'm guessing it's just part of the intermittent issues we've been seeing this week.

IUL worked for a little while, and is again not working. This happens all too often and is very frustrating.

>8 ashergabbay: Sorry for the trouble. Let me make note of how it's failing, if I can reproduce it. What are the search/es that are failing for you, now?

>9 kristilabrie: Hi. Any search. Just like a couple of weeks ago. Search for any famous author's name in Hebrew. No results.

>10 ashergabbay: Okay, I'll try David Grossman (דיוויד גרוסמן). Thanks.

Hmm. The first search I ran for דיוויד גרוסמן failed. When I went to our end to search it, it went through. Going back to "Add books" the search worked. Just noting this for our documentation.

>10 ashergabbay: Can you try searching again and see how it's going?

NB: another user was complaining of the National and University Library Zagreb failing yesterday, which seems to be working today. I'd really like to see what sort of general improvements we can make to search reliability, but we may need to wait for our new servers (see https://www.librarything.com/topic/369957 for the larger discussion) to do that.

I just tried to search and add a Emily Henry book and I searched by her name and nothing came up. My default is Amazon but then I tried another one and got the same timed out message.

I am currently experiencing an issue adding a new book--the search either takes a long time, then comes up with a "The search has failed" screen, or else the list of books on the right seems to reload but without any search results. Happy to provide more information if it would help.

Sorry for the trouble, folks - something was hung up on our end which was causing the "Add books" slowness/fails. We cleared the issue around 12:36pm Eastern Time yesterday. Please let me know if you're still having trouble!

9:04 am ET here. Unable to access any of the search sites. Tried Amazon, Library of Congress, Overcat

I've been having intermittent trouble, myself, on "Add books". The behavior seems similar, lately, where my initial searches fail but then subsequent searches end up going through. It's as if the initial connection is taking awhile to load.

I couldn't add books today. I tried all the options for sources but it timed out or said no books found.

>18 cmbohn: Sorry for the trouble. Can I get more details from you?

1. Around what time of day (with your timezone) were you having trouble?
2. What search/es were failing for you, and from which data sources?
3. Were you searching on the LibraryThing App (and if so, iOS or Android) or LibraryThing.com?
4. When a search failed from a source, did you repeat the search again (from the same source), or did you just try to swap sources?

I'm in Mountain time zone and it was sometime in the afternoon.
I tried Library of Congress, Amazon & Amazon.UK
LibraryThing.com on my Kindle
I don't remember.

I did get them to work yesterday though. Overcat seemed to work fine.

I've also been having problems adding from Amazon tonight. Right now I'm trying to add the 8 comic book issues adapting Robert Jordan's New Spring. A search of "wheel of time new spring comic" gives a "no results found" message. However, if I just search "wheel of time new spring", it brings back such titles as "Robert Jordan's New Spring #3 comic (Red Eagle) (Wheel of Time, New Spring #3)" and "Robert Jordan's New Spring #5 comic (Red Eagle) (Wheel of Time, New Spring #5)". Meanwhile, searching just "new spring 3" or "new spring 5" also brings back no results...

Moreover "wheel of time new spring" at least brings back results; "wheel time new spring" (or "wheel time of new spring") gives no results found.

As another weird example: a search for "ebook robots" brings back exactly one result, while a search for "ebook robot" (singular) brings back 1000 results, many of which contain the plural word "robots" in the title.

I have been having the same issue for the last three days. Searching under book title, author name, or ISBN in "Add Books" fails repeatedly. I usually try in the wee hours of the morning, between midnight and 3am CDT. I usually only use amazon.com as a source in adding new books to my collection. I try at least three times before giving up and searching via the "Search LibraryThing" box at the top right. I only use the website.

>21 saltmanz: I'm having issues adding single issues of comic books too. Been having to add them manually.

>22 SaintCeadda: I've resorted to opening up a tab to Amazon, searching Amazon for the book I want, then copying the ASIN number out of the URL and pasting it into the LT Add Books searchbox. Can always find what I want with that method. :)

The problem continues to persist, and it isn't intermittent. Every book I try to add via "Add books" fails whether I use the title or the ISBN.

>24 saltmanz: For most physical books, the ASIN and ISBN are the same, and with "Add books" not recognizing ISBNs, I'm not being able to add 95% of my library.

>25 SaintCeadda: What source are you using? Change sources?

>27 timspalding: I've had the same problem with at least a dozen books this late afternoon & evening. Sources included the following: Metro Boston Library Network (Boston, MA); Yale University (New Haven, CT); Brooklyn Public Library (Brooklyn, NY); New York State Library (Albany, NY); Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA); OhioLINK (Columbus, OH); University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI); University of Chicago (Chicago, IL); MARMOT Library Network (Colorado Public and Academic Libraries) (Grand Junction, CO); University of Texas -- Austin (Austin, TX); National University of Ireland, Galway; Trinity College, Dublin; University of Melbourne (Parkville, Melbourne, VIC).

I didn't try all those sources for all books, although I did try them all for a couple, and I'd say that I did try at least 3 for each book. I searched for ISBN and/or title.

I just entered Kinder des Radiums

I searched the ISBN 9783827014504

It was not found at Overcat, GBV, SWB, or Österreichischer Bibliothekenverbund, but it was found at Amazon Germany.

This seemed like normal behaviour for a very recent book.

>28 LeslieWx: This is really helpful, thanks. Can you post some of the searches that were failing for you? I'd like to do periodic testing to try and see if I can find any patterns.

>30 kristilabrie: I'm interpreting your question as "the works for which searches were failing at multiple locations". Here they are:

• https://www.librarything.com/work/446483/details/286733799

• https://www.librarything.com/work/33350158/details/286729262

• https://www.librarything.com/work/120059/details/286737833

• https://www.librarything.com/work/13432029/details/286738364

• https://www.librarything.com/work/19395320/details/286739096

• https://www.librarything.com/work/1651875/details/286743957

• https://www.librarything.com/work/2445460/details/286744077

Not 12, sorry ... I guess it just felt that way! The Irish books in particular were ones I searched for at the above-listed libraries in Ireland, Australia, Massachusetts, New York, and Chicago among others.

Here's one from Saturday:

• https://www.librarything.com/work/5513277/details/286626685

This helps! But, I meant what were you searching by? ISBN, title, title and author..?

>32 kristilabrie: I think always ISBN. I might have tried author or title for https://www.librarything.com/work/33350158/details/286729262

>32 kristilabrie: Here's an example of a failure followed by a success followed by ... annoyance at the first failure. All done on a Mac (Sequoia 15.5) using Firefox (138.0.4).

https://www.librarything.com/work/692833/details/286833873 is a paperback published by the State Geological and Natural History Survey of CT. It has no ISBN or similar number printed in it, so I had to search by title. I chose just the main part, before the ":", i.e. "Face of Connecticut", and typed that into the search field at the LT "Add Books" page (at 11:56am MT, if that is useful). I first tried Library of Congress; failed. I then tried Yale (b/c CT) and succeeded!

Two hours later I'm doing my typical tweaking of a new entry: forcing the title into title case, specifying paperback, trying to fill in Dewey, LC Classification, and other numbers. I open catalog.loc.gov, type in "Face of Connecticut", hit search, and ... there it is! https://lccn.loc.gov/86620889. Got a Dewey number, got an LCCN, got a LC Classification that makes a whole lot more sense than the one on the Yale record. But I wish my "Add Books" search at LoC had worked!

All of which is provided as input to your debugging process. I'm amazed at how many bugs you're juggling, all while awaiting relief on the server end.

>34 LeslieWx:

That sounds very much like the LC wasn't responding.

>33 LeslieWx: Great, thanks. I'm going to try periodic testing to see if I can find any patterns over the next week or two, for an assortment of searches and sources. (Mainly putting this here for reference and easy testing.)

Using the following ISBNs:
9780853422839
9780692404164
9781857911329
9781905704095
9780671791766

The following title/author:
Glossary of Meteorology / Huschke, Ralph E.

The following sources:
Overcat
Amazon.com all media
Library of Congress (Washington, DC)
Metro Boston Library Network (Boston, MA)
Yale University (New Haven, CT)
Brooklyn Public Library (Brooklyn, NY)
New York State Library (Albany, NY)
Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA)
OhioLINK (Columbus, OH)
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
University of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
University of Melbourne (Parkville, Melbourne, VIC)
MARMOT Library Network (Colorado Public and Academic Libraries) (Grand Junction, CO)
University of Texas -- Austin (Austin, TX)
National University of Ireland, Galway
Trinity College, Dublin

Test 1, just finished.

ISBN 9780853422839: found on Overcat and Amazon (not the others, without checking all libraries directly I'd say this is expected).

ISBN 9780692404164: found on Amazon.

ISBN 9781857911329: found on Overcat, Amazon, Trinity College ( https://www.tcd.ie/library/collections/ ), not the National Library of Ireland ( https://catalogue.nli.ie/ timed out for me, couldn't verify expected behavior).

I'll try more later over the coming weeks.

Test 2 just finished:

ISBN 9780671791766: Found on Overcat, Amazon, Yale University, Brooklyn Public Library. Failed on LoC, Metro Boston Library Network.

ISBN 9781905704095: Found on Amazon. Failed on all other sources.

ISBN 9780853422839 (repeat): Found on Overcat, Amazon (same results as before). Failed on the others (same results).

ISBN 9781857911329 (repeat): Found on Amazon. Found on Overcat on the 2nd attempt. Failed on Trinity College. (different behavior)

Test 3:

Trinity College, Dublin: ISBN 9780853422839, the irish language - "The search has failed" on /addbooks, timeout error on our end.

Seattle Public Library (new test source): 9781905704095, atlas of the human body, into the woods - "The search has failed" on /addbooks, timeout error on our end.

9780671791766 (The New Our Bodies, Ourselves): same results as Test 2.

9780262033848 (Introduction to algorithms): successful at Yale University, University of Texas -- Austin, University of Vienna, CCUC (University Union Catalogue of Catalonia), Melinda, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge (Cambridge, CAM, ENG), REBIUN (new test source)

I wish this would get sorted. (No more than those of you who are working on it, I'm sure.)

>40 mysterymax: I've found that having specific sources and sample searches that are failing (and how they're failing) are most helpful, as I've become more familiar with testing these.

What source/s are you currently having trouble with? What are some searches that are failing for you and what error message/s are you getting for those searches?

I usually go first to Overcat, then the Library of Congress, then I work my way through my list of sources. I usually start with the title, when that fails I try the ISBN if there is one, and when that fails I try the author. Sometimes, not always I'll get a hit on the ISBN or the author. The message I get is just that there is no record of that book or something like that. I get tired of trying, you shouldn't have to do so many searches for a book that is clearly not an obscure one.

>42 mysterymax: I hear you. What's the latest title/ISBN that you couldn't find?