New sources in Switzerland: Swisscovery and Renouvaud

Dear LT staff,
Could you please add the following data sources?

a) Swisscovery https://swisscovery.slsp.ch
b) Renouvaud https://renouvaud.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?vid=41BCULIB_VU2...

Both are using ALMA/Primo.

On the other hand, the existing Swiss sources NEBIS and RERO are becoming obsolete (Swisscovery is their successor), with NEBIS being shutdown at the end of March 2021. I don't know the schedule for RERO but it's probably similar.

Got A. With B, I'm having trouble figuring out the database name (and by extension the server name) for connection purposes.

>2 davidgn:
Sorry, I didn't know what details would be helpful or needed. I suppose I can find out the parameters for Renouvaud... This would be for z39.50 and/or SRU, right? Which protocol do you use for Swisscovery?

Pretty sure it's Z39.50 behind the scenes.
And through trial and error (as usual), figured Swisscovery was on Ex Libris's eu03 Alma server, with database name 41SLSP_NETWORK. (eu03.alma.exlibrisgroup.com:1921/41SLSP_NETWORK) But have tried a bunch of permutations of the Renouvaud 41BCULIB_(???) on Alma servers eu through eu05 with no luck.

>4 davidgn:
Perhaps you can try 41BCULIB (without suffix) as the database name. As far as I know, Renouvaud is also hosted on the European Alma servers, but they are probably a single institution while Swisscovery (a.k.a. SLSP depending on the context - don't ask ;-) ) is a network of institutions. If it doesn't work, I will try to activate my contacts and hopefully I will get some answers.

>5 Felagund: Tried 41BCULIB_INST (which is the usual for a single institution), as well as 41BCULIB_NETWORK and 41BCULIB. No joy.

>6 davidgn:
Thanks for trying, I'm going to ask my contacts and I'll get back to you when I have more info.

Ok, B could be hosted on its own server. Have you tried renouvaud.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com as the host? Maybe renouvaud.alma.exlibrisgroup.com instead. inst code could be 41BCU_ALMA.

No useful response from my contact yet, but this page confirms davidgn's findings about Swisscovery:
https://slsp.ch/en/metadata (slsp-network.alma.exlibrisgroup.com is indeed an alias for eu03.alma.exlibrisgroup.com). renouvaud.alma.explibrisgroup.com looks promising, and it is an alias for eu01.alma.exlibrisgroup.com.

Source names like renouvaud.alma.explibrisgroup.com reminds me of a joke I use at work: If you choose a very easy to guess password, you should choose a really hard username :-)

Took a few whacks, but no luck yet.

>11 davidgn: What have you tried?

>12 lesmel: All I mentioned above, plus 41BCU_ALMA, 41BCULIB_ALMA, 41BCU_ALL, 41BCULIB_ALL, all on at least eu01.alma* and renouvaud.alma*, if not on all the euXX.alma*

Renouvaud should be available. It's in the list of external resources for Alma. It could be SRU and not z39.50.

>14 lesmel: Remind me to pin that list for future raiding. ;-)

Ok. it's weird that the inst code doesn't seem to be 41BCULIB. If you do a Google search for 41BCULIB site:exlibrisgroup.com ....

Hrm. Try 41BCULAUSA_LIB.

>16 lesmel: 41BCULAUSA_NETWORK *** Ding-ding-ding, we have a winner!
Where did you even get that?

>17 davidgn: You are never going to believe me. lol

Google search: 41 BCU site:exlibrisgroup.com There's a hit with ...
https://renouvaud1.userservices.exlibrisgroup.com/view/uresolver/41BCULAUSA_LIB.....

Then I decided to look at records in their Primo and found this:

INST ##$a41BCULAUSA_LIB$bE$c51392514970002852
INST ##$a41BCULAUSA_NETWORK$bP$c71101248910002851
MMS ##$b991023644639402851$a41BCULAUSA_NETWORK
MMS ##$b991021315399702852$a41BCULAUSA_LIB

>18 lesmel: Nice work!

>1 Felagund: Let us know when NEBIS and RERO stop working, and we'll take them down.

Well done dadidgn and lesmel!
I'll keep you posted about the NEBIS shutdown for sure, RERO will perhaps be a more empirical test :-)

Unfortunately, I need to report that my searches fail both for the Swisscovery and the Renouvaud sources. I'm using one-keyword searches with words that should return numerous titles... any idea what could be wrong? Connection using a Z39.50 client (yaz) seems to work nicely with these parameters.

>21 Felagund: Confirmed. Will ping ccatalfo about this. Might be a disconnect between the back end and front end. Similar things have happened before, and whatever he does, it's usually a quick fix.

>21 Felagund: seems to work for me

Bordet-Wassermann

$ perl z.perl eu03.alma.exlibrisgroup.com:1921/41SLSP_NETWORK Bordet-Wassermann
returns 44 records and a search on LT using Swisscovery as source gives the same 44 records.

So either ccatalfo already fixed it or I need a better hint as to what to search for. (Generally I much prefer: "A search for "Bellamy" failed" to "I'm using one-keyword searches with words that should return numerous titles". Otherwise Murphy's Law will make sure that all of your examples fail while all of mine succeed :-)

LT Renouvaud search for wassermann fails, while

$ perl z.perl renouvaud.alma.exlibrisgroup.com:1921/41BCULAUSA_NETWORK Wassermann

returns 120 records.

So as of now Swisscovery seems to work from LT while Renouvaud doesn't.

Testing from within the "Add books / edit sources" machinery works, so maybe ccatalfo should take a look at that bug/feature since we have seen it a couple of times before. I.e. The bug is that a source works if testing from within the "Add books / edit sources" but that it doesn't work when using it for normal "Add books" functionality.

>24 bnielsen:
Interesting.
For Swisscovery, my original query was "quantum". Using yaz-client , the search returns 35118 hits. The search fails on LT. Now I have tried with more specific searches in case the size of the result list could be the problem: quantum chemisty (5290 hits) , then quantum chemistry mccurry (11 hits).
The last one indeed works for me, the other two only produce "The search has failed" as an error message. I tend to start with very generic searches when exploring a new system, apparently it was the wrong approach here. So I guess we're done with Swisscovery :-)

Renouvaud: indeed no success. "lausanne library" returns 84 hits with yaz-client, and the LT search fails.

>25 Felagund: Possibly there's some parameter tuning at fault that could be tweaked on Swisscovery. (It worked fine for "bible" in the Edit Sources dialog). But yes, Renouvaud is just unaccountably dead (though also worked for "bible" when adding). Hoping ccatalfo can take a peek next week.

There is definitely a record limit for z39.50 results. I don’t know what the limit is or what side it is; but I've come against it a few times. If it is typical of what I am familiar with 10K is the ceiling on returned hits.

Update: the NEBIS catalogue was closed yesterday. RERO is still around, and might actually survive for an undefinite time: only the academic libraries have moved to the Swisscovery network, the public libraries are still part of RERO.

Update: the Renouvaud parameters might have changed. The URL for their Primo instance is now https://renouvaud1.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?vid=41BCULAUSA_LIB:V...

>29 Felagund: I would test Renouvaud in the Add/Edit Sources; but the link is still broken. Can anyone get to the add/edit sources interface? There's a bug report: https://www.librarything.com/topic/332272. By educated guess, I'd say connection details to Renouvaud haven't changed. It looks like they upgraded from NUI to PrimoVE interface. That wouldn't change the Alma connection details.