Endnote Import Format

jason.law
I have a reference source (US EPA library catalog) which only publishes it's citations in EndNote Import Format. The file looks like this (there is no line wrapping in the source file):

%M 60828144

%T Microbial source tracking guide document

%L EPA 600/R-05-064

%I U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development,

%D 2005

%U http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPURL.cgi?Dockey=2000D20V.txt http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/pubs0705.html

Just wondering if there is an easy way to import files like this?

Thanks!
  • jason.law
    I had a hard time even discovering what this format was and it doesn't seem to be well documented. But there is some information starting on page 121 here:

    http://endnote.com/sites/en/files/support/endnotex6machelp.pdf
  • adamsmith
    In general we can import that format - it's referred to as "Refer/Bibix" - but Zotero expects it to start with
    %0 Journal Article
    (or any other type descriptor). That's also the way it's defined in the document you link to.

    What's the URL of the EPA library catalog? Quite possibly we could support that natively.
  • jason.law
    I just figured out that adding the %0 tag made it import. Is the amount of white space between the tag and the entry important? I noticed that when zotero exports bibix that there is just one space.

    Here's the url for the library catalog:
    http://cfpub.epa.gov/ols/catalog/catalog_lookup.cfm
  • adamsmith
    From the library catalog, how do you get the the export? I can't find it.

    I think Zotero import ignores additional whitespaces (as long as there's at least one) so that shouldn't matter.
  • jason.law
    You have to select the reference and then go down to 'Actions'

    Try searching for this in the keyword field: EPA/600/R-05/064

    When you get the record, select it, then go down to "Action". Hit the dropdown and select the Endnote (Import) option. Then you can hit the 'SAVE or PRINT" button.

    There are other options for saving with more information, but they don't seem to be in a standard format.

    Thanks for the help! We use a lot of EPA references!

    J
  • adamsmith
    that looks doable, probably with better info than from the export.
    For item types - is everything in that library an EPA report? That would make things a lot easier.
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited May 3, 2013
    Alas, no. The EPA site also includes journal articles. I have always just hand entered items from the EPA library sites.

    edit: cut and paste
  • adamsmith
    If you have some examples for different item types I can take a look. I like the EPA. I want to make this work.
  • aurimas
    From advanced search
    books, documents, journals, reference, audiovisual
  • jason.law
    I have a contact at the EPA library in Cincinnati that was helping me. I don't want to paste her e-mail address on the forum, but if there is a private channel I'd communicate it to you. Perhaps she has some information on how you might infer item types.
  • DWL-SDCA
    See:
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29002616/EPA-example.txt

    This includes technical reports, journal articles, and a book or two. No designation of what is what.
  • adamsmith
    thanks everyone - Jason - sent you a private message with my e-mail you should see it in your inbox top right of this page.
  • DWL-SDCA
    Looking back over my list, I don't think that my search included a journal article. The db does include the journals of the Soc of Automotive Eng; IEEE and selected articles from large and small publishers' journals
  • aurimas
    @adamsmith
    I'm not sure if you noticed, but there is a "Full Record" button, which displays more metadata.

    Also, it may be hard to include file attachments. A lot of them are links to other webpages, but some are direct links to PDFs. If we let Zotero figure out the mime type, it will end up taking a lot of snapshots. We can try to filter out some of the common domains that are not direct PDF links, but it looks like that may be a huge list. I think one solution would be a doHead request to determine mime type (which we currently can't do from within translators). Alternatively (and I think probably a better way to go), I think we may alter Zotero's attachment policy. If mime type is not specified and snapshot is not explicitly set to true, we should probably _not_ be taking snapshots. But maybe there are places where that's not desirable. I can't think of one right now.
  • adamsmith
    yes, the Full Record is what I'm looking at - the Refer data is so poor it's not worth it - I'll scrape this from the page unless I can get to MARC with the help of the librarian (it looks very much like the Full Record is generated from MARC).

    I'll cross the attachment bridge once I get there - I'd love to get them, but since this is mainly a library catalog, I don't think many people expect them.
  • aurimas
    I'll cross the attachment bridge once I get there - I'd love to get them, but since this is mainly a library catalog, I don't think many people expect them.
    We're here to shatter expectations :-)
  • jason.law
    Just wondering whether anyone has been able to do any work on a EPA library translator. If not, I'm willing to do some legwork to get one up and running. I've looked at some of the translator dev documentation and it doesn't seem too bad.

    Jason
  • adamsmith
    sorry, I have been more busy than I though I'd be, so no. If you want to give it a go, feel free to. Post any questions to zotero-dev
    https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/zotero-dev
    where aurimas and I will be happy to help.
  • jason.law
    I'll give it a shot. From the conversation above, it seemed like finding out whether the MARC data is accessible is the first step. If so, I'm assuming that the process would involve using an existing MARC translator? If the MARC isn't available, scraping from the Full Record link on the search results would be the way to go?
  • adamsmith
    exactly. If you can get to the machine-readable version of MARC or MarcXML this is going to be very easy - just download, pass to the respective Zotero import translator and you're done.
    If MARC is in a human-readable form it's a little trickier since you'll need to re-convert it to regular MARC (we can point you to samples if that becomes relevant).

    If you end up just scraping from the page, have a look at the Framework:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/translators/framework
    which makes that quite simple.
  • adamsmith
    A translator for EPA is now up. Your version of Zotero will automatically update within 24hs, or you can update manually using the "Update Now" button in the "General" tab of the Zotero preferences. If you're using Standalone, restart Zotero and your browser after updating.

    Any problems let us know.

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