Extracting metadata from PDFs

HughHutchison
Hi there. I've checked that the pdftotext and pdfinfo tools are installed and current, and they are at versions 3.04 and yet I have not once managed to drag in the necessary data for Harvard referencing for my saved PDFs. Any advice? Thanks. Hugh
  • adamsmith
    Could you explain a little more what you're actually doing and what is and isn't happening? I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "drag in the necessary data" or what this has to do with Harvard referencing.
  • HughHutchison
    Hi Adam. For example, I want the metadata to accurately reference the Committee on Climate Change's 4th Carbon Budget. I'm using Firefox. I chose to download the document to Zotero, and tick the 'retrieve metadata for PDF'. It downloads and gets added to my Zotero reference list, and when it says 'downloading metadata for PDF' it ends up with a red cross and 'no matching references found'. If I right click on the other PDFs in my reference list, and select 'Retrieve metadata for PDF' the same thing happens for every PDF. Does the phrase 'no matching references found' mean that there simply is no metadata out there to populate my Harvard reference? Thanks.
  • adamsmith
    Yes, that is what it means. In general, since metadata comes from library catalogs and google scholar, this works best for more traditional scholarly works.

    I just tried part 2 of the CCC report and that didn't retrieve metadata for me either. If you want to check if this is working in general, try with a PDF of a journal article.
  • HughHutchison
    Adam, I see that now, thank you. Without all the necessary data, this makes the Harvard reference incomplete, for example, it has 'anon' for author, and 'no date'. As I know these pieces of information from the document, can I manually add them to the Zotero record, so that when I insert it as a reference, these fields are correctly populated?
  • adamsmith
    Right-click --> Create Parent Item and then add the info manually.
  • HughHutchison
    Great, thanks. H

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