Calibre to import metadata to Zotero bibliographies.

Greetings, I'm new using Zotero and I need help with the following. I have a collection of 7000 books and academic papers I manage with Calibre. This program creates a file for each text opf where are their metadata. I wish I could do with Zotero citations of these texts, but Zotero does not recognize Calibre opf. Agradesco Somebody help me because I could not find information on this.
  • Maybe someone could write an OPF translator for Zotero - though it'd be a good amount of work and it's rarely requested - but otherwise there is no way to do this, at least not with Zotero. It's possible someone has written a conversion tool from OPF to one of the many bibliographic formats Zotero imports - including all industry standards such as RIS, bibtex, Refer, MODS, Marc - but I couldn't find anything quickly.
  • edited August 23, 2012
    I found a thread on the Calibre forum that suggests it's possible to create a BibTeX file from within Calibre (which Zotero can import):

    http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108952

    (also, some documentation on OPF: http://idpf.org/epub/20/spec/OPF_2.0.1_draft.htm )
  • Thank you very much, I tried your solution and it works in part. Import of the data, not the labels of Calibre, but it helps. Thanks again ;)
  • Does this still work for people? When I try to import the *.bib catalogue I exported from Calibre, Zotero hangs for me (that is to say - it starts the dialogue box, I see a bit of green going left and right, but then it just seems to freeze); and when I use the java-script posted here, Zotero complains the file format isn't right. Any ideas? Thanks much.
  • if you can post part of the bibtex we may be able to tell what's going on.
    Not sure which java-script you're referring to?
  • edited February 8, 2013
    Sure:
    <XML><RECORDS>

    <RECORD><REFERENCE_TYPE>1</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>1</REFNUM><AUTHORS><AUTHOR>Schember, John</AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2010</YEAR><DATE>Jun</DATE><TITLE>Calibre Quick Start Guide</TITLE><PUBLISHER>calibre</PUBLISHER><LABEL></LABEL></RECORD>

    <RECORD><REFERENCE_TYPE>1</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>2</REFNUM><AUTHORS><AUTHOR>Koren, Yoram</AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2010</YEAR><DATE>Jul</DATE><TITLE>The Global Manufacturing Revolution (Wiley Series in Systems Engineering and Management)</TITLE><PUBLISHER>Wiley</PUBLISHER><ISBN></ISBN><LABEL></LABEL></RECORD>

    <RECORD><REFERENCE_TYPE>1</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>3</REFNUM><AUTHORS><AUTHOR>Hussain, Imtiaz</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>Pattnayak, Satya R.</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>Hira, Anil</AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2008</YEAR><DATE>Jun</DATE><TITLE>North American Homeland Security: Back to Bilateralism?</TITLE><PUBLISHER>Praeger Security International</PUBLISHER><ISBN></ISBN><LABEL></LABEL></RECORD>

    <RECORD><REFERENCE_TYPE>1</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>4</REFNUM><AUTHORS><AUTHOR>Fransman, Martin</AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2010</YEAR><DATE>Jul</DATE><TITLE>The New ICT Ecosystem: Implications for Policy and Regulation</TITLE><PUBLISHER>Cambridge University Press</PUBLISHER><ISBN></ISBN><LABEL></LABEL></RECORD>

    <RECORD><REFERENCE_TYPE>1</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>5</REFNUM><AUTHORS><AUTHOR>Andersen, Torben Juul</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>Schrøder, Peter Winther</AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2010</YEAR><DATE>Jul</DATE><TITLE>Strategic Risk Management Practice: How to Deal Effectively with Major Corporate Exposures</TITLE><PUBLISHER>Cambridge University Press</PUBLISHER><ISBN></ISBN><LABEL></LABEL></RECORD>

    <RECORD><REFERENCE_TYPE>1</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>6</REFNUM><AUTHORS><AUTHOR>(Editor), Jonathan Reuvid</AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2010</YEAR><DATE>Jun</DATE><TITLE>Managing Business Risk: A Practical Guide to Protecting Your Business</TITLE><PUBLISHER>Kogan Page Ltd</PUBLISHER><ISBN></ISBN><LABEL></LABEL></RECORD>

    <RECORD><REFERENCE_TYPE>1</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>7</REFNUM><AUTHORS><AUTHOR>Gray, Cheryl</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>Hellman, Joel</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>Ryterman, Randi</AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2004</YEAR><DATE>Jun</DATE><TITLE>Anticorruption in transition 2: corruption in enterprise-state interactions in Europe and Central Asia, 1999-2002</TITLE><PUBLISHER>Washington, D.C. : World Bank, c2004.</PUBLISHER><ISBN></ISBN><LABEL></LABEL></RECORD>

    <RECORD><REFERENCE_TYPE>1</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>8</REFNUM><AUTHORS><AUTHOR>WetFeet, </AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2008</YEAR><DATE>Jun</DATE><TITLE>Deloitte Consulting</TITLE><PUBLISHER>WETFEET, INC.</PUBLISHER><ISBN></ISBN><LABEL></LABEL></RECORD>

    <RECORD><REFERENCE_TYPE>1</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>9</REFNUM><AUTHORS><AUTHOR>Pigman, Geoffrey Allen</AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2007</YEAR><DATE>Jun</DATE><TITLE>World Economic Forum: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach to Global Governance</TITLE><PUBLISHER>Routledge</PUBLISHER><ISBN></ISBN><LABEL></LABEL></RECORD>

    <RECORD><REFERENCE_TYPE>1</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>10</REFNUM><AUTHORS><AUTHOR>Schwab, Klaus</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>Roubini, Nouriel</AUTHOR><AUTHOR>Bilodeau, James</AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2006</YEAR><DATE>Oct</DATE><TITLE>The Financial Development Report 2008</TITLE><PUBLISHER>World Economic Forum</PUBLISHER><ISBN></ISBN><LABEL></LABEL></RECORD>

    <RECORD><REFERENCE_TYPE>1</REFERENCE_TYPE><REFNUM>11</REFNUM><AUTHORS><AUTHOR>Donnelly, Thomas</AUTHOR></AUTHORS><YEAR>2005</YEAR><DATE>May</DATE><TITLE>The military we need: the defense requirements of the Bush doctrine</TITLE><PUBLISHER>Washington, D.C. : AEI Press, c2005.</PUBLISHER><ISBN></ISBN><LABEL></LABEL></RECORD>
  • yeah, that's not bibtex at all.
    Bibtex entries should look like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BibTeX#Examples

    The above is a custom XML format. It'd likely be pretty easy to write a translator for that, but someone would have to do it.
  • The javascript was in the mobileread link posted by Rintze in this thread - here is the URL: http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/~tapted/bib2endnote.html - and this is a BibTeX to Endnote (proprietary XML) converter.
  • no, don't convert to Endnote XML - Zotero can import BibTeX directly.
  • Well as I said, Zotero hung when I tried to import the *.bib file into Zotero. So I figured I had the same problem that made the other people try the java program. I'll try again
  • right, but I wanted to see the bib file to see what's going on there. Zotero was never going to be able to import the xml. Aurimas is working on an Endnote XML translator, but I don't know where he's with that - there is no particular urgency for it and doing it right isn't trivial.
  • Still no solution here? I don't know about you guys, but I LOVE calibre for managing my ebook collection, and I LOVE zotero for managing my e-article collection (and also the books that I actually end up citing). Will the twain then never meet?
  • I just tried to import a Calibre-produced Bibtex file into Zotero (after making sure it was actually Bibtex... that's the BIB option in Calibre's "Generate catalog" dialog box, in case someone need to know) and it worked well enough - all books ended up in one single folder, so it's easy to identify them and perhaps delete them all before reloading for an update. The only problem I have noticed were a few silly publication dates, but I need to take a closer look in order to determine which step of the processed produced these.
  • OK, I have identified the origin of these silly publication dates (Jan. 1st, year 101): that's the metadata I have in my calibre database for some e-books, probably a default value assigned by calibre when a specific date isn't available in the imported document and designed to stand out when sorted in ascending or descending order.

    So as far as I can tell: exporting metadata from calibre to Zotero through the Bibtex format works just fine.
  • Rintze (Aug 23rd 2012) linked solution above works, for exporting data from calibre into zotero.

    Thanks

    Here is what Kovid Goyal says:
    "click the arrow next to convert books and create a catalog in bibtex format. endnotes [and zotero] ought to be able to import a bibtex catalog".
    And you can select individual books (at least 3)
    http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108952
  • Here is what Kovid Goyal says:
    "click the arrow next to convert books and create a catalog in bibtex format. endnotes [and zotero] ought to be able to import a bibtex catalog".
    ----
    yes, it works on me.
    one more question: is it automatically updating when calibre's library grows?
Sign In or Register to comment.