I need to find a large number (hopefully close to 1000)
names/publishers/years of technical books (or textbooks) that have
both English and German versions. If there aren't a thousand technical
books that have both English and German versions, I'll consider
fiction as well.

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 24 Oct 2003 17:37 PDT

Do you, by any chance, have access to the WorlCat database of books,
which is available through many libraries?

You can see the WorldCat website at:

http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/

but you need to be a subscriber to make use of the database.

WorldCat lists more than 40,000 non-fiction books that have been
translated either from English to German, or vice-versa.  It is
possible to sort this list alphabetically, by popularity, by date, and
so on.

I can access the list myself.  Unfortunately, though, I cannot post
the results of a WorldCat search here due to copyright restrictions. 
I can show you a typical record, however, which looks like this for
starters:

The way things work book of the body  
Author: Van Amerongen, C.
Publication: New York : Simon and Schuster, 1979
Document: German : Book 

and can be expanded to show a great deal of additional detail, such
as:

The way things work book of the body  
C Van Amerongen
1979 
German  Book 541 p., [4] leaves of plates : ill. ; 24 cm. 
New York : Simon and Schuster, ISBN: 0671224549 
Translation and adaptation of Der Mensch und seine Krankheiten
translation and adaptation by C. Van Amerongen.

===========================

If you can access WorldCat through a university or municipal library,
I can show you how to conduct a search of it in order to return the
type of list you're looking for.

I'm afraid I cannot post 40,000 book records (or even 1,000!) here as
an answer to your question. However, if you'd like, I can post an
answer with instructions for using WorldCat to generate the list, if
you can find access to the database.

Of course, you are free to modify the price you have offered for an
answer, if that seems appropriate for the type of answer I am
suggesting.

pafalafa-ga

---

Clarification of Question by nlpt-ga on 27 Oct 2003 11:57 PST

I'll take you up on your offers, both to have you post the
instructions on how to access the list through WorldCat, as well as to
lower the price of the answer (since now I'll have to find a library
and do the search myself).

Would you be willing to share the information on how to access the
list through WorldCat for $100.00?

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 27 Oct 2003 13:32 PST

Hello nipt-ga,

Thanks for getting back to me.

First, here's a freebie...there's no secret to accessing WorldCat. 
It's more or less a matter of luck.  I don't know where you are
located, but in the US many city libraries provide database search
services at the library, and also provide their patrons on-line access
to various services.

It just so happens that my local library makes WorldCat available in
this way, so I can search it at leisure.

You'll have to inquire at whatever libraries you have access to
regarding WorldCat.  You might also want to ask about "Books in Print"
which is another powerful, and fairly flexible, on-line search system
that may meet your needs.

Now to business.

Please adjust the price of your question (with the "Edit Question
Parameters" button) to the level you feel is appropriate, and I will
be happy to post the instructions for creating a WorldCat list of the
non-fiction books available in both English and German.

Cheers.

pafalafa-ga

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 27 Oct 2003 19:24 PST

I may have misread your earlier note.

If you're asking if I think $100 is a fair price for the information I
have to offer, my answer is "Yes...sure".

But I cannot change the price of the question...only you can do that. 
Once you set the reset the price, I will be able to go ahead and
provide an answer.

pafalafa-ga

Hello again,

Thanks for making the adjustments we discussed earlier.

I've included, below, a number of options that you can explore.  The
most powerful and flexible, in terms of searching, is most likely the
WorldCat database that I mentioned.

But in case you have any problems accessing WorldCat, there are also a
few other options that can produce good results.  Some on-line book
sellers have pretty powerful search options that can return the type
of results you're looking for.  I've included the two that strike me
as the best for your purposes.

Let's have a look at these two, first, and take up WorldCat at the end
of this post.

If anything below needs elaboration, just let me know by posting a
Request for Clarification, and I'll be happy to provide additional
information.

Good luck in your efforts.

pafalafa-ga

==================

First off, have a look at the Alibris book seller site's Advanced
Search function at:

http://www.alibris.com/search/search.cfm?S=R

The Alibris database actually gets a chunk of its titles from
WorldCat, so this is one way to access some of the WorldCat data
without actually making a trip to your library.

On the search page, fill in the fields as follows:

-----

Search in:  Books

Any word(s): transla* [the * is a wild card, and will find translate,
translation, etc]

Language: German

Sort results by:  Pub Date Reverse (this lists the most recent book,
first)

Off to the right hand side of the page, is a box for "Limit search to
nonfiction"...check this, if you want only nonfiction results.

Note that you can also restrict results by price of book, date of
publication, hard or soft cover, and a few other criteria.

-----

[Note:  The Alibris site worked fine for me as I was experimenting
with various searches, but then went down has and remained that way
for much of the day...it may need some time to get itself back in
service].


The result of the search will give you over 6,000 books that, I
believe, will meet your criteria.

The results are useful, as they tend to include both the English and
German names of the book.  For instance, a typical listing looks like:

-----

 
Immune-System Activation
by Selby, John
Dutton, New York Date Published: c1989. 
ISBN: 0525246932 Description: 
Translation of: Das Immunsystem aktivieren. 
Bibliography: p. 183-186. xxii, 198 p. ; 22 cm.   

-----

Note that your search results will ONLY display the first 500 titles. 
You should tinker with the search terms in order to produce some
smaller lists.

For example, conducting the same search, except with the word
"economics" added to the "Subject" field, produces a list of 195
books, the very first of which is "Arms and Hunger" (Der organisierte
Wahnsinn) by none other than Willy Brandt.

------------------

A similar but somewhat less-flexible search can be done at the Barnes
and Noble textbook site:

www.textbooks.com

Note, however, that they seem to have an expansive definition of
"textbook" -- I got some Harry Potter books translated into German in
my search results.
 

Entering the words [german translation] in the Keyword search box,
returns 28,164 books!

From a look through the list, they appear to mostly meet the criteria
of actually being English-German translations (or vice versa) but it's
difficult to be certain, given the lack of detail in some of
descriptions.

It's possible to narrow down the results by adding another keyword to
the search, such as:

textbook -- 224 results

science -- 1,261 results

economics -- 346 results

history -- 2,265 results

business -- 342 results

technology -- 206 results

I'm sure you get the idea.  This would be worth playing around with a
bit to get the combination of words that will provide you the best set
of results for your needs.

--------------

Now for the creme de la creme of book search options, I hope you'll be
able to access WorldCat.  When you do, click on the "Advanced Search"
option, and fill in the fields as follows:



Keyword = transla*

Language = German

Number of libraries = 50 or more

Limit type to:  Check "Books"

Subtype:  Select "Not juvenile" "Not fiction"

Rank by:  Default (but several options are available, should you
desire)

This search will return 941 books that meet these criteria (to
increase the number of books returned, lower the setting for "number
of libraries" to, e.g., "5 or more", and/or you could remove either or
both of the subtype filters).

The default screen will show you the first 10 of the 941 results.  To
increase the number, go to the very bottom of the page and click on
"Options".  This will allow you to reset the number of books shown per
page to as much as 100 per page.

Now...here's a good trick to know!

To get a text copy of the entire list, do the following:

--Click the "email" button right above the first listing.

--This will bring up a page that will send you ONLY the number of
items listed on the previous screen (as many as 100, if that's the
option you choose).

--To send the entire list of 941 books, you must tinker with the URL a
bit.

--In the address bar of your browser will appear a very long URL...in
mine, it looks like this:

http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org/WebZ/FSPage?pagename=email:entityemailresultset=4:entityemailnumrecs=100:entityemailrecno=1:entityemailpageprev=records:sessionid=sp03sw03-52016-dmc206t9-2vnofb:entitypagenum=29:0

--Note that part of this address is the "number of records" command: 
numrecs=100

--If you add an extra "0" to this part of the URL, so that the URL now
reads numrecs=1000, it will email as many as 1,000 records at a time.

Cool, huh?

I deliberately set the results to produce about a thousand books, and
to concentrate on the most popular books (based on the number of
libraries holding them).  But if you want to produce lists that are
many thousands of titles longer, all you need do is change some of the
parameters, as I mentioned above.


---------------

Lastly, I'll mention one thing that might be worth knowing down the
road.  When I was looking at the WorldCat site, I can across a small
blurb about a soon-to-be-released capability of Google to search on a
large subset of WorldCat titles:

http://www.mlnc.org/quickflash/quickflash.html#pilot


"This fall a subset of WorldCat records will be made public for
indexing by Google. Internet searchers will be able to link from
Google to WorldCat library ownership information. Users can already
find WorldCat library holdings for items found on bookseller and
bibliography sites on the Web, such as Abebooks, Alibris and BookPage.
The Google relationship extends this functionality by making WorldCat
records, and thus library collections, available via Google search
results."

If you need to produce lists in the future (after this capability
becomes available), a Google search might prove to be another good
option.  Time will tell.



---------------


I hope this all works out smoothly for you.  Like I said, any problems
at all, just let me know, and I'll be happy to continue working on
this.


search strategy:  None...made use of bookmarked sites.

At one level, the answer is useful. But ideally, I wanted a list of book pairs,
one in English and one in German. When I posted the question initially and the 
author replied, I thought the researcher would give me a short script to generate
that list. This looks like much more involved, something that I was
hoping to have the researcher do for me.