Moving from Zotero back to Bookends

[mclearc]

I'm trying to transition back to Bookends from a few years with Zotero. I need bibtex support so I use better bibtex with zotero. But I'm facing the following problem. I can export from Zotero in a variety of formats that retain attachment paths when imported to Bookends, but lose the citekey info. Alternatively, I can export to bibtex from Zotero and import that into Bookends, which will give me citekeys but not attachements. I've tried workarounds via Zotero->bibtex->Jabref/BibDesk. Jabref sees attachments from the .bib file but can't export to a format that retains that information for Bookends. BibDesk strangely doesn't find the attachments in the .bib file at all, so export from BibDesk seems useless.

Any help on how I might get both citekeys and attachment paths imported into Bookends would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Jon]

Export from Zotero as RIS. Look in the exported text file. Is the citekey information there? And if so, what is the tag in front of it?

Jon
Sonny Software

[mclearc]

Unfortunately I don't see any citekey info included in the RIS file. Here's a sample entry:

TY - JOUR
TI - You Me and the World
AU - Eilan, Naomi
T2 - Analysis
DA - 2016///
PY - 2016
VL - 76
IS - 3
SP - 311
EP - 324
ER -

Here's the original bib file:

@article{eilan2016,
timestamp = {2016-10-14T18:44:40Z},
title = {You {{Me}} and the {{World}}},
volume = {76},
number = {3},
journal = {Analysis},
author = {Eilan, Naomi},
year = {2016},
pages = {311--324},
file = {eilan2016_you_me_and_the_world.pdf:files/106/eilan2016_you_me_and_the_world.pdf:application/pdf}
}

[Jon]

Bookends can't import what's not exported.

I found this recent thread about exporting the citekey from Zotero, it seems they don't want to make this a standard, although there apparently is a way to do it with a translator utility (you'd have to look or post on their forum to learn more about that).

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... OkBfvSc3S4

Note that you can have Bookends automatically generate citekeys for you, although they won't match the ones you had in Zotero.

Jon
Sonny Software

[mclearc]

Thanks. And yeah I appreciate that Bookends has the ability to generate citekeys, but I have over 5000 references and I'm a bit worried about key changes. I'll check more on the Zotero forums. Thanks again.

[mclearc]

If I can modify the RIS export translator to export the citekey will Bookends be able to pick it up? Is there a specific tag it will need?

[Jon]

Bookends doesn't care what the tag is. You define it in Zotero and then, in the Bookends filter, place that tag next to the User1 (Key) field so it knows what to do with the data after the tag.

Jon
Sonny Software

[mclearc]

perfect – thanks