The missing catalogue – Why finding books in translation is still so hard
Summary
The post argues that finding translated books is hindered not by absence of translations, but by fragmented, uneven metadata across national libraries, commercial aggregators, Wikidata, UNESCO, and historical archives. It highlights Zenòdot, a cross-referencing project that currently aggregates 23 sources and millions of editions to illustrate how missing connections obscure translations, and asks for collaborative infrastructure and standardized metadata to improve discovery.