Importing a CSV

sklein3
Any tips on CSV imports?
Peculiar how this does not appear simple, because Zotero has the ability to export CSVs.

Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    CSV is not a standardized format for bibliographic data (nor is there a standardized 'bibliographic CSV' or the like), so Zotero doesn't support CSV (or any other tabular format) on import. What's the use case?
    I
  • sklein3
    We purge ILL request history from ILLiad twice a year and users would like to retain their request history in Zotero.
  • adamsmith
    I only see the user-facing side of ILLiad and that doesn't have CSV/tables, to I'm not entirely sure how this looks on your end, but couldn't you with relative ease create simple bibliographic format like RIS or BibTeX (which would also be more flexible than CSV)? If you search the forums for import from Excel and the like, the standard workaround is to use Excel concat to produce BibTeX (which has the benefit of caring less about new lines than RIS). Rather than leaving that to endsures, a script could achieve something similar.
  • sklein3
    There is functionality on the backend:
    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qtqrrChaeoaDiBxG2MLhcQ-gd6P0WWfX/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117296600428602881858&rtpof=true&sd=true
  • adamsmith
    yeah, I'd create an Excel sheet (or, if you're so inclined, R or python script) that converts that into BibTeX. Getting that into any format Zotero would even conceivably import as a table is going to be a mess.
  • sklein3
    So no simple solution?
  • adamsmith
    I'm giving you the easiest solution I can think of. Whether you consider that simple or not is up to you :D
  • sklein3
    Thank you, Adam.
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