Logos 7 library export/import

ethanvb

I recently followed the directions for exporting Logos 6 library for upload to Zotero, and many of the resources imported with missing information, especially titles and authors. Logos says it is because I have 7, and zotero may not support some of the changes since 6. Can anyone help me put my library into Zotero?

bwiernik

What format are you exporting from Logos?

ethanvb

Bibtex, in a .txt file

bwiernik

Can you post a sample BibTeX output file from logos 7 to hastebin.com and link here?

ethanvb

I believe this is what you are asking for? If so, this is a copy of one of the problematic entries.

https://hastebin.com/yahiraduki.makefile

bwiernik

Yeah, so that item appears to be a book, but Logos is exporting it as "@misc", a generic item type which Zotero imports as Journal Article, and Logos is also exporting the title to the "journal" field, which is for the title of the journal a journal article is published in. That field should be "title" instead.

I would check to see that your data are entered correctly in Logos. Do you get any correct imports from their exported BibTeX? Are the problematic items only for a specific type? Can you export to another format, like RIS (and if so does that work better)?

In any case, this looks like an issue either with the way you have stored the data in Logos or with Logos's export feature creating incorrect BibTeX files.

ethanvb

All data within Logos is how it came from purchases within Logos. There are several that come through correctly. Such as this: https://hastebin.com/qikidoweyu.makefile

I just tried RIS. It comes into Zotero with many things as dictionary entries, journal articles, magazine articles, and encyclopedia entries. Samples here. https://hastebin.com/enakigozef.js

ethanvb

So, in short. Ris does not work any better.
If i changed the instances of MGZN, DICT, and ENCYC, to BOOK in the .txt of the RIS, would that change it for the better? Seems tedious, but not as bad as typing everything in..

bwiernik

The RIS actually looks much better than the BibTeX, so I would start there.

You will need to make two changes. Both are easy and fast.

The item types should all be changed to BOOK. Zotero interprets MGZN, DICT, ENCYC as entries/articles in magazines, dictionaries, etc., not the full books (this is generally how they are used elsewhere as well, and it appears even that Logos is trying to use them this way given the issue with titles below). To change these all in one go, open the RIS in a text editor like Notepad, TextEdit, Visual Studio Code, SublimeText, Atom, etc. and use find-and-replace to search for:
TY - DICT
TY - MGZN
TY - ENCYC

one at a time and replace with:
TY - BOOK

Second, Logos is storing the titles of these books in the the T2 field (which is used for journal titles or book titles of chapters, etc.), rather than the TI title field. That's clearly wrong here. To fix that, find-and-replace for:
T2 -

and replace with:
TI -

bwiernik

To help with missing authors, I would need to see a book that has that sort of issue.

ethanvb

Thank you. That is all very helpful.
As for the ones missing authors, it appears that they simply do not have an AU line in the exported material. Does it matter where this information is added, or can I simply add an AU line to the end of the entry?

ethanvb

eg. https://hastebin.com/ahatagugew.coffeescript should have an author Rick Brannan

adamsmith

the order of elements doesn't matter, except that every record must start with TY - and end with ER - (so don't add it at the end)

bwiernik

For adding new lines, it might be faster to do that in Zotero after import.

ethanvb

True enough. Thanks! This was all very helpful.