Import JSTOR PDF already downloaded to my computer

juliekv
I just discovered zotero today on HNN. Great product! I have loads of pdf files I've downloaded to my pc from jstor. Is there anyway to import these into zotero?
  • noksagt
    There is no way to automagically retrieve citation info from PDFs. See:
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/255/importing-metadata-from-pdf
    for information on cb2bib or go to the jstor pages for the documents you have and import them.

    You may associate the PDFs you already have with references you already have in your zotero database (by using the attachments tab).
  • erazlogo
    edited April 11, 2007
    while we are on the subject, it would be nice if control-clicking on an item would bring up an option to "attach link to file" and "attach a stored copy of file." right now users can attach notes, snapshots, and web links this way--why not pdfs?
  • sean
    edited April 11, 2007
    Do you mean from the browser or from the file system? Currently in the browser you can right-click (or control-click) a PDF to add it to your library.
  • erazlogo
    edited April 11, 2007
    file system - for those of us who take digital images of documents in archives and then put them together into a pdf which then needs to be added to an item. (not add to the library in general--i know how to do that--but directly link to an existing item) i realize most people contributing to this forum mostly do research online, but it would be nice to enhance some features for archival digital research as well.
  • erazlogo
    edited April 12, 2007
    just to clarify, here are the two commands i'd like added to the "control-click on item" menu. seems counterintuitive to have them in the attachment tab but not on the control-click.
  • sean
    Oh, I get it now. Yes, that's a good idea. And we also plan to add drag-and-drop support from the file system.
  • erazlogo
    great, thanks! drag and drop would be great too--particularly if you have an entire folder of images/pdfs.
  • erazlogo
    edited May 27, 2007
    I just got several error messages after I "dragged and dropped" 640 images at once into Zotero. All images imported fine, but because there were so many of them, every 50 or so images Firefox asked me whether I wanted to abort the script. I had to hit "cancel" over 10 times. It would be great if the abort messages didn't come up--the Terminal showed that there was nothing wrong with the import.
  • noksagt
    http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox/put-off-firefox-15s-unresponsive-script-dialogue-162574.php
  • erazlogo
    thanks!
  • dstillman
    Actually, you more likely want dom.max_chrome_script_run_time for Zotero, not max_script_run_time (which is the one mentioned on the Lifehacker page and which in Firefox >1.5 only applies to content pages).

    Zotero temporarily sets max_chrome_script_run_time to 0 before long operations and resets it afterward, but there may be places where it doesn't do that that still cause the message to appear on some systems. (If there's an error during the operation, the pref can also be left at 0 inadvertently.)
  • erazlogo
    edited May 29, 2007
    thanks, dan! i set both dom.max_chrome_script_run_time and max_chrome_script_run_time to 30--hopefully that will work.
  • erazlogo
    edited June 11, 2007
    another zotero size & speed issue:

    i tried to add a tag to 1108 items at the same time and the process of moving them over the tag took forever--I had to up dom.max_chrome_script_run_time to 100 to get rid of the firefox error. when i try to move the items it looks like zotero creates formatted citations for each of them which takes additional time. but i don't need citation formatting--i only want to add the tag.

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