PDF saving advice?

kate.blakeley

I'm having a couple issues with storing and managing the associated pdf's with zotero.

1. It will often not save the actual pdf, but rather re-directs to the log-in screen of the article database. Is this possibly connected to using the library's proxy server to access databases when working from home? How can I get it to save as a pdf rather than an html?

2. Saving the grabbed pdf's in a more clear fashion. I know I can re-direct the folder it saves things to from the Firefox preferences folder, but:

Can I get it to stop saving it according to those number file-names with associated other folders, and instead save it as a straight pdf in a specified place with a naming convention?
Or, if I can't because of the metadata issues, can I get it to save to my pdf library folder in addition to the bulky zotero folder, again as just a straight pdf?

3. Adding straight pdf's that didn't store initially via zotero to my zotero collections: it doesn't actually get any of the metadata or actually create an entry, just an unattached attachment. How can I fix this?

4. Can I somehow grab the auto-tags and keywords from zotero and attatch them to the stright pdf files using something like Punakea?

Thanks for any insight or help! I've been really loving zotero, but these issues are driving me crazy as my library increases.

Tjowens

1. Can you provide some specific examples with functional links for this behavior.

2. Zotero already renames captured PDFs. See this thread. http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/199/renaming-pdf/ . Zotero can only store PDFs inside the storage folder and I can't think of any clean way to dup saved files somewhere else.

3. Zotero 1.5 has the ability to get metadata for PDF's that you manually add. http://www.zotero.org/support/retrieve_pdf_metadata_screencast

4. Not that I know of.

adamsmith

@1. just making sure: you do have the "automatically attach associated files" box checked in the preferences, right?
Also, there are some pages where this just doesn't work currently - Ebsco and SSRN are two examples.
Also, my general experience is that a lot of things work more smoothly through vpn networks than through library proxies. Surely your institution offers that.


@3. not sure I'm understanding that correctly - but there's several ways through which you can attach a .pdf to existing metadata (i.e. an existing Zotero entry, which was presumably created from the page that didn't download the pdf ). Obviously the Attachments - link to file option (which is also the best way to link to files in your pdf library). Also, through the Save Link as Zotero Snapshot function - then drag&dropping it to the metadata. Finally, when you're using acrobat plug-in - by using the right-click on the metadata and "attach snapshot of current page"

kate.blakeley

Tjowens and Adam, thanks for your clarifications.

Re:

1. I think it's an EBSCO issue like you mentioend, Adam - I do most of my database searching in EBSCO Academic Search complete, and get bounced to the login screen when Zotero thinks it has the associated file.

2. Tjowens, it's good to know that apparently Zotero can't save a 'just the pdf' file, which is the major part of my concern.

3. Tjowens, thanks for the link to the screencast, that looks helpful.

4. Good to know, I'll just add manually then.

Thanks again!

adamsmith

just another clarification @1:
Zotero doesn't think it has the file - what you have is a snapshot of the page - you can look at the snapshot by clicking "view snapshot" and it will show you the ebsco entry for the article (but not the full text, neither as html nor as .pdf).

Zotero simply doesn't "see" that there is a pdf to be downloaded.
These things usually happen when a provider changes the structure of the page - pdf download used to work for ebsco. For something as important as Ebsco this should be fixed soon.

eudinaesis

Will the SSRN thing be fixed soon? It hasn't been working for me (attaching PDFs) for ages...

valiantdust

Seconding both EBSCO and SSRN. The last seems to have some site translation problems beyond PDF grabbing, too -- it keeps listing "SSRN eLibrary" as the publication...

Edit: I guess that "SSRN eLibrary" in the publication is a feature, not a bug -- it's specified in the code of the translator script.

Anthony J. Langlois

I'm also having problems with SSRN - are there any further developments? It won't capture PDFs, and all the item data is lumped into the publication field, rather than disaggregated into volume, issue, pages, date etc.

eamoone

I'm also interested in whether anyone is working on or knows how to get the pdf download to work with Ebsco (specifically Academic Search Complete). I have the box checked in Zotero 1.5 Sync but it's not downloading the pdfs. I tried from the folder view, the individual item view and also by exporting to endnote. Thanks.

dlovelace

Hi there, Just throwing in my two cents as well. I pulled the error code 1134991866. Basically I was on a webpage in EBSCO trying to download the volume (works awesome in Jstor) and got an error message (while trying just one entry to see if it would work). the url I was it is:
http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.uwlib.uwyo.edu/ehost/results?vid=2&hid=6&sid=52ebdb00-3f5b-4093-9f44-034720f16b54%40sessionmgr3&bquery=(JN+%22Modern+Geology%22+and+DT+19980701)&bdata=JmRiPWFwaCZ0eXBlPTEmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl
Dunno if this will help or not. Love Zotero!
Cheers,
dave