further automation of PDF acquisition

rmelamed · Post by **rmelamed** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 8:51 pm

Bookends is a GREAT program. It has entirely changed how I deal with knowledge acquisition. For me, a really usefully addition would be to have Bookends periodically, automatically search for PDF files that I do not have. Many journals change an article's public access over time.
Thanks Bob

Post by **Jon** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 10:10 pm

Hi,

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking for. Do you want Bookends to periodically download a pdf and check it against an exisiting pdf? And then report if it's different?

Jon
Sonny Software

rmelamed · Post by **rmelamed** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 11:20 pm

Hi Jon, You misunderstand my request. When using the wonderful get PDF feature, there are many times that a PDF is not freely available at that time. Often at later dates, sometimes a year or more, they become available. It would be nice to have a function that, perhaps at night, would search through the database for references that were missing PDF files and would then attempt retrieve and link those missing PDFs. I currently go back and search for missing PDF files using the get PDF function one at a time manually. This is quite time consuming although easy to do with Bookends. My database has over 8,000 references and I am missing many articles from recent years that I would like to have. If you can implement the search and get function that I am requesting, it would be nice to do so for specific years.
Thanks,
Bob

Post by **Jon** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 8:46 am

Ah, I see. Perhaps this will help now -- you can select multiple references in the List View and tell Bookends to Get PDF. It will go throught them all and try to fetch the pdf if it can. You can have this run at night, of course, if you have hundreds. (You may also not know that you can do an sql/regex search for reference without attachments, which will identify the references you might want to have Bookends work on).

Jon
Sonny Software

rmelamed · Post by **rmelamed** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:17 am

Hi, This is exactly what I need. It would be nice if there was a list of the newly downloaded references so that they could be easily examined.
Thanks,
Bob

Post by **Jon** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:26 am

If you show reference number as a column in the List View (set in Preferences), you will see the references in (usually) the order they were added, from 1 (first) to n (last).

Jon
Sonny Sotware

rmelamed · Post by **rmelamed** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:37 am

Any chance of getting "Search and Retrieve PDF" in a future release?
Thanks,
bob

Post by **Jon** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:38 am

I thought we had that now. What additional functionality are you requesting?

Jon
Sonny Software

rmelamed · Post by **rmelamed** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:57 am

The automated version

"Ah, I see. Perhaps this will help now -- you can select multiple references in the List View and tell Bookends to Get PDF. It will go throught them all and try to fetch the pdf if it can. You can have this run at night, of course, if you have hundreds."

Post by **Jon** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 10:17 am

At the moment I think the overhead of such a feature would outweigh its usefulness. It's simple enough to select multiple references and do a pdf fetch. One way to semiautomate this would be to create a smart sql group that finds all references without a pdf (and, say, published in a particular year). Click on this, select the references in it, and do a batch "get pdf".

Jon
Sonny Software

rmelamed · Post by **rmelamed** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 11:36 am

Thanks very much for solving my issue. I stupidly did not realize that I could make multiple selections for PDF downloading. Is there a way to automatically put the newly downloaded PDFs into a folder?
Thanks very much for your help and a great program. I use it constantly everyday.
Bob

Post by **Jon** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 11:53 am

Hi,

The pdfs will automatically be downloaded to your default attachments folder. If you want them downloaded elsewhere, you can always change this setting to any folder you want, do the download, and then change it back to the normal default folder.

Jon
Sonny Software

rmelamed · Post by **rmelamed** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 12:02 pm

Again my error, I meant a group or smart group.
bob

Post by **Jon** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 12:33 pm

To a static group, no. You'll have to drag them there yourself (before or after the download). To a smart group, maybe. It depends on how you define that group. For example, you can make an sql smart group that finds all references with attachments, in which case they will automatically appear there once the attachment is downloaded.

Jon
Sonny Software

further automation of PDF acquisition

further automation of PDF acquisition

Search and Retrieve PDF

automated

Thanks

List downloaded pdfs in a Group