goodreads-zotero integration?

flaneuse

something to consider at some point, i hope. i use goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com) extensively to maintain libraries and notes on texts and imagine that other users do as well.

patinman

As a basis for sharing data with Zotero, Goodreads supports import and export. (I just discovered this, and am very glad to be able to back up my Goodreads booklist.) Zotero will import an RDF file and will export a bibliography file that could certainly be formatted to Goodreads' requirements. So what's lacking are scripts / widgets / an app that will convert from one to the other.

Alternatively, perhaps someone could approach Goodreads and work with them to be compatible with Zotero.

See:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/import
http://www.goodreads.com/images/sample_export.csv
http://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_library

For import, all Goodreads requires is a file of ISBNs. It will even take them from any web page you supply, so long as it does not require a login.

According to the documentation, if you supply a .CSV, .XLS, or .TXT file with the fields separated by commas as shown below, and the columns will populate the corresponding fields in Goodreads:

Title, Author, ISBN, My Rating, Average Rating, Publisher, Binding, Year Published, Original Publication Year, Date Read, Date Added, Bookshelves, My Review

Any record containing an ISBN Goodreads cannot validate is rejected and must be entered manually.

I have not tried the import function, but I have used the export function, and it works fine as best I can tell. The columns exported are:

Book Id Title Author Author l-f Additional Authors ISBN ISBN13 My Rating Average Rating Publisher Binding Number of Pages Year Published Original Publication Year Date Read Date Added Bookshelves Bookshelves with positions Exclusive Shelf My Review Spoiler Private Notes Read Count Recommended For Recommended By Owned Copies Original Purchase Date Original Purchase Location Condition Condition Description BCID

I have not checked how commas and special characters in exported fields are handled.

Because Goodreads is not a primary source of publication data, I would think any Zotero import from Goodreads should rely on Zotero's ISBN lookup function for that information.