Zotero's (recurring) problems extracting from ProQuest (e.g. EEBO, Early English Books Online)

innovation1 · February 22, 2022

Nowadays when I attempt to extract metadata for multiple ProQuest EEBO documents at once, Zotero reports "An error occurred while saving this item" and does nothing.

This problem recurs every few months. Any permanent solutions?

AbeJellinek · February 22, 2022

Do you mean that you search for something on EEBO and click the Zotero toolbar button (which should have a folder icon) on the search page? If so, could you give an example search term that fails?

adamsmith · February 23, 2022

If this happens erratically rather than reliably, though, I'd guess this is https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/site_access_limits -- ProQuest is fairly trigger-happy

innovation1 · February 23, 2022

@AbeJellinek yes, I am referring to cases when the folder icon appears, allowing me to extract metadata for multiple listed ProQuest documents. At present, all search terms I am using fail.

@adamsmith you may be right. However, I have noticed that, thankfully, whenever I report this issue on this Forum, days later the problem is resolved. I've assumed then that there is some sort of temporary fix.

adamsmith · February 23, 2022

Last time you reported this in January I don't think anything relevant got fixed on the Zotero side with respect to importing multiples (the other issue you reported did get fixed, as did the date issue you reported some time last year).
I'm pretty sure multiples just started working again because you waited a couple of days and ProQuest unblocked you/your IP address.