The worksheets I circulated earlier in the week include examples of how to take a list of ISBNs from a spreadsheet/csv file and search on Worldcat (see the 'Automated Love Examples' docs in http://bit.ly/automatedlovefolder)
What these examples don't do is include how to check the outcome of the search automatically are record that.

I think it would be relatively easy to add to the iMacros example to extract a hit count / no hits message and write this to a file using the iMacros SAVEAS command but I haven't tried this. For a 'no results' option you'd want to look for the presence/extract the contents of a div with id=div-results-none
For a results count you'd want to to look for the contents of a table within the div with class=resultsinfo

Alternatively you could look at the Selenium IDE extension for Firefox which is more complex but allows more sophisticated approach to checking and writing out information about text present/absent in web pages retrieved.

Hope that is of some help

Owen



Owen Stephens
Owen Stephens Consulting
Web: http://www.ostephens.com
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Telephone: 0121 288 6936

On 13 Aug 2014, at 11:20, Nicholas Brown <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Apologies for cross posting
> 
> Dear collective wisdom,
> 
> I'm interested in using automation software such as Macro Express or iMacros to feed a list of ISBNs from a spreadsheet into Copac or Worldcat and output a list of those that return no matches in the results screen. The idea would be to create a tool that can quickly, although rather roughly, identify rare items in a collection (though obviously this would be limited to items with ISBNs or other unique identifiers). I can write a macro which will sequentially search either catalogue for a list of ISBNs but am struggling with how to have the macro identify items with no matches (I have a vague idea about searching the results screen for the text "Sorry, there are no search results") and to compile them back into a spreadsheet.
> 
> I'd be keen to hear if anyone has attempted something similar, general advice, any potential pitfalls in the method outlined above or suggestions for a better way to achieve the same results. If something useful comes of it I'd be happy to share the results. 
> 
> Many thanks for your help,
> Nick 
> 
> Nicholas Brown
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