Import existing pdf's

steve.buckley@charte
Hi,
I was just introduced to this program this morning-- about 10 minutes ago-- and have installed it.
Perhaps this has been discussed already (please point me to where, if so), but I am writing a paper for my senior project, and have 90+ journal articles that I'm doing a journal review on.
It appears that I really could've used this over a year ago when I was first doing my research, gather papers, etc....

Is it possible to take the files that I already have on my hard drive, in a specific folder, and pull the appropriate bibliographic info off them, and import it into Zotero?
I never saved the web page addresses which I pulled these journals from, and most of them were on the university's library server anyway, so there's no off campus access to the library for this.

TYIA for your helps.
  • ajlyon
    Drag the lot of them into Zotero, and right-click and do "Fetch metadata for PDF" for bunches of about 20.
  • steve.buckley@charte
    edited February 26, 2011
    wow... that was cool.
    Ok, it did not take about most of them, and actually appears to have removed the ones it did not take from the list. Ok, my mistake, it left the pdfs it could not obtain the data from, and placed the one's it could it a titled line, placing the pdf in that line. (I know I'm not stating that correctly.)
    In checking the list, it took 56 out of the 92 papers, and was able to obtain the metadata from those 56.
    How would I get the information from the rest of them?
    A few it stated were not OCRed (they appear to be image pdf's, not processed), and others it stated it could not find the references.
    Thanks again for your helps....
    this was cool. I'll definitely be using this in the future.
  • ajlyon
    The process isn't failproof, since some PDFs don't have embedded text Zotero can use, and since some PDFs don't show up in Google Scholar (which Zotero uses for this feature).

    First make sure that you weren't locked out of Google Scholar, by going to it manually and seeing if it works. Too many requests too quickly will trigger a temporary block on your IP -- if a message appears, wait a bit and try detecting some of the PDFs again.

    But it's quite possible that many of these can't be processed automatically; if so, try typing each title into Google Scholar. If there's a hit, you should be able to save it using the paper or folder icon in the address bar, then drag the PDF onto your newly created item in your Zotero library. Some PDFs are just not in any article databases-- you'll have to create items for them manually.
  • steve.buckley@charte
    All of the files were either pulled of Google's scholar, or a university library's db. I'm guessing that the ones which were not recognized are the ones which I HAD to pull at the library in my searches back last Spring.
    I suppose I could go back up there, load up, and see what happens then. I'll contact the library and ask.

    Still, this is awesome.
    Now-- next question.
    Can I print this list out as a bibliography for my citations/reference pages, and have it show up as the standard I'd selected in my set up? In my case I selected MLA format.

    Again, thanks.
  • ajlyon
    Select, right-click, Create bibliography from selected items. Copy to clipboard or save as rich text or HTML. Open or paste as appropriate, print.
  • steve.buckley@charte
    AJ,
    Thank you again for your help.
    This is indeed an impressive program. Seems it needs some more advertisement on college campuses.
    This could've helped me immensely last year. I called the library, and IT tech support up there, and they had no idea- never heard of it before.
    Have a great day.

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