Zotero does not find ISBNs automatically

bertpopping2022
Hi, using Zotero's magic wand to populate open access documents with an ISBN, Zotero fails to add them like it adds DOIs.
Example: FAO's Food Outlook.
URL: https://www.fao.org/3/cc2864en/cc2864en.pdf
ISBN: 978-92-5-137171-8

Message Zotero: "Zotero could not find a record for the specified identifier. Please verify the identifier and try again."

Any recommendations on how to fix this error, or is there a workaround (other than typing the information in)?

  • denlinkd
    Not fully knowledgeable on this, but sometimes ISBNs aren't registered or indexed appropriately. I think add by ISBN fails about 10% of the time for me. Happens sometimes with DOIs, too.

    The embedded PDF metadata and the Google Books metadata are both better than starting from nothing.

    https://www.google.com/books/edition/Food_Outlook_Biannual_Report_on_Global_F/Nx54EAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
  • bertpopping2022
    edited January 6, 2023
    Many thanks. Very helpful.
    Thanks to your comment I also thought of using the option to export citations in different formats and importing them into Zotero. That works. It does not get you the PDF automatically, but at least it saves you from copying & pasting field by field.
  • adamsmith
    ISBNs don't get registered with metadata at all - we just try a bunch of library catalogs and if an ISBN isn't in any of those (as is the case for many IO reports) add by identifier fails.
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