@mronkko First of all thanks so much for trying to help. I appreciate your time and help in elucidating what the issues are.

@adamsmith and others:

Can you link to any documentation on how to write a translator file? Would this basically create a new "RIS" type file, where I would download it to Procite and do the "print bibliography" in that new translated style, and thence import the text file into Zotero?

If anyone can do this for $50- $100 that would be doable. I am basically offering my own money, because I think it is important for my employer that he get to a new database system that will allow for quicker imports on a day to day basis, since he is always coming across new citations. He wants to upgrade to a new system, but the switching costs are high if I have to go through every item (5,000+ citations) and edit them manually in Zotero, and would be a barrier to others who might switch to Zotero, who don't have someone to do this for them.

I am sure there are many other academic procite users who would appreciate this kind of service.

This is a time sensitive issue, as I have put a hold on adding new citations to Procite in favor of adopting Zotero. Is there anyone who is able to write the translator?

Note:

Appears to be a problem translating Procite "Book Long Form". In RIS it translated to Book Section:

Procite Screenshot Book Long Form Record:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19141190/ExBookLongForm in Procite.png

RIS Output:
TY - CHAP
N1 - Record ID: 2648
A1 - Van Gennep, A.
A2 - Vizedom, M. B.
A2 - Coffee, G. L.
N1 - Author Role: translated by
T2 - The Rites of Passage
N1 - Author, Subsidiary: Kimball S. T.
N1 - Author Role: with an introduction by
CY - Chicago
PB - University of Chicago Press
PY - 1960
KW - anthropological theory
ER -

Zotero result for RIS import (note: I have changed 2 authors to translators and one to contributor. All import as Authors or comments with the RIS file!):
http://db.tt/C5o2Tzhv

I'll try to put something together, but it will take a day or two. Thanks for all the screenshots and the manual maevepotter, those will be very helpful.

Regarding the Book Long Form, that looks to be a bug in ProCite (probably the export filter), but I have no experience using ProCite, so I wouldn't know how to help you fix this. You could probably change all book long form entries to book and re-export, unless that would make you lose some info.

Another bug: Conference Proceedings

See screenshot of record in Procite: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19141190/conference proceeding procite.png

Issue:
Proceedings Title and Place of Meeting fields dumped into notes in Zotero, even though Zotero has corresponding fields. See Zotero screenshot: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19141190/Zoteroresult of conference proceeding.png

RIS File output was:

TY - CONF
N1 - Record Number: 330
A1 - Allard, Francis
T1 - Investigating the Bronze Age of Khanuy Valley, Central Mongolia
N1 - Connective Phrase: In
A2 - Hanks, Bryan
A2 - Linduff, Kathy
N1 - Proceedings Title: New Research Directions in Eurasian Steppe Archaeology: The Emergence of Complex Societies in the Third to First Millennia BCE
Y2 - 2006/02/10-2006/02/10
N1 - Place of Meeting: University of Pittsburgh
CY - Pittsburgh
PB - Department of Anthropology & Center for Russian and East European Studies
PY - 2006
N1 - Notes: have, seen
Allard 2006

[notes redacted here for clarity]

KW - Mongolia
KW - pastoralism
ER -


Also, as you can see, Hanks and Linduff are represented under A2, Which went into Zotero as a contributor, instead of Editor/Compiler, as they were in Procite (see prev. screenshot).

I will let Aurimas handle this.

Book Long Form: It might make me loose some info, like "Series Volume", (which did not transfer to zotero from the RIS, went into notes). See screenshot: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19141190/procite book long form ex 2.png

The problem with changing these in Procite is finding them. I don't think I can sort by source type, so I would have to find those types of records by going through all the records.

You might be able to fix this by modifying the RIS export style (I assume you're using RIS-Endnote style) in ProCite. If you follow the manual starting at page 417, you might be able to figure out what you need to tweak. I don't have ProCite, so I can't tell you exactly, but under Book Long Form you need to change CHAP to BOOK somewhere.

Keep in mind that Book Long Form can be used to cite practically anything in ProCite, and their suggestions include books, book sections/chapters, atlases, and a couple others, so you may end up converting some things that are meant to be book sections into books.

Issue:
Proceedings Title and Place of Meeting fields dumped into notes in Zotero, even though Zotero has corresponding fields.

We should be able to handle this in the modified RIS translator.

same here - you're in good hands with Aurimas

Thanks for having so much confidence in me :-) Now I just need to not disappoint. I'll start working on this when I get off of work.

So I folded and downloaded the Demo version of ProCite.

Turns out you can sort items by their item type. When you have your database open in ProCite, go to View->Configure Record List... Under Layout, you have a list of fields that display. Check an additional field to enable it, then in the drop-down box scroll to the top and find Workform. You can also change the title to whatever you want. Now you can sort by item type. This may also be used to sort by most other fields.

As far as editing the RIS export format, I will assume that you are using directions similar to the ones posted here http://www.refworks.com/rwsingle/help/Exporting_from_Bibliographic_Programs_and_Importing_into_RefWorks.htm#ProCite

That would mean that you already have the RIS-Endnote.pos style file. To edit it, you can open this file in ProCite just like you would open a library. In the Open dialog select Output Style for "Files of Type" and find the RIS-Endnote.pos file (if you don't know where it is, try ProCite5/Styles/Standard). This will open style configuration dialog. For your purposes, you will want to select Book Long Form, then go to the Bibliography tab and change the first line from TY - CHAP to TY - BOOK. Save the file (you can save as a different file to have a backup of the original) and re-export your library using this new output style.

Either of these options will do what you want. You'll probably have more control using the first one, since you'll be able to decide whether the item should be a book or a book chapter, but the second option should be much faster.

Finally, the RIS file that you linked to in your second post (https://raw.github.com/gist/2206031/1d3e4be1b6b0fadd0ef86f6567f11a97d50c86f7/March26ProciteRISdata) is that still the original file that you exported? or is it now the version that you modified throughout the course of this discussion?

[there is also no reason not to test this - the worst that can happen is that you'll need to restore the old translator, which takes one click].

Hi Aurimas,

Wow what a lot of work, thank you so much for all of your efforts. Sorry for the slow response, as I was not at work for several days.

Here is a link to the original database so you can work with it in Procite. The pdt is the database that you would import, honestly not sure what the other file does, but it is part of the output when you save the database, so there it is.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19141190/Rogers-ArchaeologyupdatedMar26.pdt
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19141190/Rogers-ArchaeologyupdatedMar26.pdx

Let me know if you still need the original RIS, or the one mronkko made.

I am going to review what you wrote a little more and try to import it.

Am I understanding correctly, that what you wrote is a translator, and that I will copy it to the Zotero translator folder, and then import the database? Will I need to export a fresh RIS file, and/or edit the RIS style file like you mentioned above? Or will I simply let Zotero read the ProCite database file?

Thanks.

Meghan

Am I understanding correctly, that what you wrote is a translator, and that I will copy it to the Zotero translator folder, and then import the database?

exactly.

Will I need to export a fresh RIS file, and/or edit the RIS style file like you mentioned above? Or will I simply let Zotero read the ProCite database file?

the translator works with an RIS file, not the ProCite database - I believe you should be able to just use the one you have already created, Aurimas would have to confirm.

I did not modify the original RIS file at all; that was the output straight from Procite.

Regarding the Record ID comment out: that sounds fine. Thanks.

"That would mean that you already have the RIS-Endnote.pos style file. To edit it, you can open this file in ProCite just like you would open a library. In the Open dialog select Output Style for "Files of Type" and find the RIS-Endnote.pos file (if you don't know where it is, try ProCite5/Styles/Standard). This will open style configuration dialog. For your purposes, you will want to select Book Long Form, then go to the Bibliography tab and change the first line from
TY - CHAP
to
TY - BOOK
. Save the file (you can save as a different file to have a backup of the original) and re-export your library using this new output style.

Either of these options will do what you want. You'll probably have more control using the first one, since you'll be able to decide whether the item should be a book or a book chapter, but the second option should be much faster."

Will I still need to do the above to ensure a complete transfer, or have you coded that into the translator?

Do you foresee any problems I should check for when I am testing it?

Also, Zotero seems to have problems when I import the whole RIS at once, with occasionally scripts stopping, and prompting me about it, or just taking a very long time (+20-30 minutes). Should I break up the RIS into smaller files?

Finally, what html do you use to make the quotes from other people show up outlined in the dotted line? I tried < quote > < /quote > but no luck.

Thanks.

I made a tutorial of what we have currently (perhaps the translator will change locations or be updated elsewhere). Hope it is helpful to someone. I thought it might be nice to summarize the process. I tried making it into a webpage hosted on dropbox, but I can't get the images to load, and the code is a bit beyond me.

PDF of tutorial: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19141190/Tutorial Pro to Zot/TutorialProcitetoZoterobyMulkerin.pdf

Meghan

large imports will take a long time - the busy script does not indicate a bug, Firefox produces that automatically when a script doesn't finish pretty quickly. I'd suggest you chop the import file into more chunks - but if you don't want to, you can likely just get it to work by hitting "continue" a couple of times for that script.

I just ran your entire file through the translator. That pop-up came up about 15 or so times, but if you keep clicking continue, you will eventually get through it all.

After the translation, I did not see any errors and it managed to import all 4719 items. I'm just not sure how correct all of them were.

EDIT: actually it might take you even longer. I wasn't technically importing the items into the library, just parsing them.

How long did it take you to import all the items? Just curious if this computer isn't working well. Does a zotero rdf usually load faster (like this one takes a while because the translator is hard at work)?

Took me about 2.5 minutes using Zotero Firefox extension. Not sure how it compares to other formats.

I have cancelled (by closing the program) several times after it seemed like it had frozen. Is there some kind of cache I should clear on Zotero, in case of a partial import that doesn't show up in the library?

That's a good question about stopping imports somewhere in the middle. There may be some database corruption, but someone else would have to answer this. There is a feature in Zotero to check your database integrity. Preferences -> Advanced -> Check Database Integrity.

Do you consider the translator complete at this point, pending any issues?

I noticed that we import GEN as presentation, which leaves out some fields. I'll need to take a look at this, but I can't right now. Right now this is the only bug I'm aware of, but it has not been extensively tested. You were going to be my test subject :-)