Bulk export for import to Zotero

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Bulk export for import to Zotero

1JohnCapper
Mrz. 11, 2011, 7:00 am

I have used LT to import individual works into Zotero by clicking the icon in the address bar. However, I have 2500 works in LT that are not yet in Zotero. I can export these in csv or tab format, but zotero will import only in the following formats:
Zotero RDF;MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema); BibTeX; RIS; Refer/BibIX; orUnqualified Dublin Core RDF.
Can anyone tell me how to achieve this kind of format by export from LT?

2chellerystick
Aug. 23, 2011, 1:53 am

Others have suggested using MARC records as the "middleman." I believe some of that capability is experimental, but out of 1500 records it looks like maybe 30 failed to bring it a title and/or author. A few other spots had problems w/ specific characters. Because they are MARC records they bring in subjects (presumably LoC SH) but not my own tags. One downside: I didn't see any way to export by specific collections, tags, etc. Haven't played around to see what other options are available. It would be great if e.g. the RSS feeds were RDF compliant or something like that but they do not seem to be.

3Will-0
Jul. 17, 2022, 9:36 pm

>1 JohnCapper: I am pretty new to LibraryThing, and really liking it. For the record, methods of exporting entire collections in a format accessible by Zotero is important to me also.

4bnielsen
Bearbeitet: Jul. 18, 2022, 4:56 am

>3 Will-0: I'm experimenting a bit to be able to present records from the TSV export file a bit nicer. I.e.

Author: Walter Ernsting
Title: 9 science fiction stories
--
Author: Isaac Asimov
Title: Nebula Award Stories 8
--
Author: Robert Silverberg
Title: The Feast of St. Dionysus
--
Author: Robert Silverberg
Title: The Best of Robert Silverberg
--
...

The idea is to select fields from (an enriched version of) the TSV export file and have the presentation format described as something like this:

Author: ##Primary_Author_First_Last##
Title: ##Title##
--

i.e. something like mail merge.

I don't know Zotero or have any idea which format would be best. I think I used BibTex a bit 15 years ago to see what happened if I exported the local library's database as BibTex and tried to import it into a BibTex tool. (It worked great for 10 records, okay for 100 records and sucked bit time for anything like 1000 records or more).

I'm on holiday right now, so I might take a look at Zotero on the next rainy day :-)

If you have a link to a good description of say Zotero RDF, it would be nice. (I got a bit tired of running in circles inside the zotero.org site, i.e. pages like this: zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero
that just says it is easy, but doesn't give an example or a link to how the file format is supposed to look like.)

And maybe we should take the discussion to this group?
https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/8114/Hacking-LibraryThing

5bnielsen
Jul. 18, 2022, 5:04 am

I came across this one:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/40747#690816

It has a link to a webpage that can convert your LT data to BibTeX, so maybe that's an easy solution?

6bnielsen
Bearbeitet: Jul. 18, 2022, 3:21 pm

And RIS looks very simple, i.e.

TY - BOOK
TI - Charles Babbage and his calculating engines
CY - New York
PB - Dover Publications
PY - 1961
SP - 38, 400 sider
SN - 0-486-20012-4
LA - eng
CN - 19.6107
DP - dbc
ER -


I wonder how much / little you want imported to Zotero.