Sonny Software

I have a number of PDF book files that contain ISBNs.

Is there some way that I can drag the PDF from the desktop to Bookends, and have it create a new reference with the PDF attached, look inside the PDF file, find the ISBN, and then "Autofill From Internet" using that ISBN?

I could scroll to find the ISBNs by hand, copy/paste the ISBN, edit it to remove spaces, and manually select "Autofill", but this will be tedious for many PDFs...

Thanks!

M.

Not really. ISBNs are not labeled in any standard way in PDFs. Bookends would have to search for every word that might be an ISBN (10 or 13 chars, with or without dashes, with or without spaces) and at test them to see if they are valid ISBNs. And even then the first one found might not be the ISBN for the PDF, but rather an ISBN mentioned in the body of the PDF. Rather than using Autofill from Internet, you should use Autocomplete Paper, where the PDF will be open in front of you and you can copy/paste the ISBN more easily.

Jon
Sonny Software

OK, thanks.

I thought BE already does that.

If BE doesn't already do that, it think this might be worthy of consideration.
1. it has been done by other reference managers--I think Zotero does this--https://libguides.massgeneral.org/zotero/metadata.
2. the process doesn't seem that different from that of Doi: just make the search to the first few pages (6/7)


We know the format of books goes like this:
Coverpage--> series page -->Title page -->Copy right page.
Most books come with this pattern.
The ISBN is found in the Copy right page.

So, you can make BE to search the first few pages and pick the numbers just after the word ISBN, you get the number.
I think there is a standard pattern.

ISBN ddd-d-ddd-ddd-d (Hardback) or
ISBN: ddd.dddd.ddd (ebook).
So, the pattern is the word "ISBN" followed by a concatenation of numbers and dots or dashes. You can ignore the dashes and dots, and tell your algorithm to pick only the numbers.

I honestly don't care about this feature because the Quick Add feature is good enough for me. But, I can see how this feature can be helpful in case one want to fill the reference data of large number of pdf books.