One of Zotero’s many virtues is that it is a really robust container for bibliographic data. If you want to spend a little time playing with the Citation Style Language that Zotero uses it is actually pretty easy to get some useful data out of Zotero to do all sorts of fun things with. One of the most simple of which is exporting items for services like Librarything and ISBN numbers which each service then either grabs the data from Amazon, the Library of Congress, or just the existing pool of items that they already have available.
Gist:
- Install this CSL into your copy of Zotero.
- Create a biblography from all your books using the ISBN Export style
- Import the list to Librarything or Goodreads importers
Organize Books Inside Zotero
Before explaining how to export the books you’ll want to get a clean list of books you own. I tag all the items in my library that I own with the “I Own it” tag. From their it is easy to create an advanced search for all your books that have that tag.
Getting ISBN Numbers
Next use my nifty CSL file to export ISBN numbers. Just save this CSL file to your desktop and drag it into a open Firefox window, you should then be prompted to install the CSL. Once installed you will have ISBN Export as a option in the create bibliography menu.
This very simple export style underscores how easy it is to get started playing with CSL. The part of the style that does all the work is really just these few lines.
<bibliography> <sort> <key variable="ISBN"/> </sort> <layout suffix=""> <text variable="ISBN" prefix="" suffix=" "/> </layout> </bibliography>
The first part of this <sort> sets list to sort by the ISBN number, and the second part, <layout> tells Zotero that all we want is the ISBN without any characters as a prefix or a suffix.
Uploading Your File
From there all you need to do is upload your file. Both of Goodreads and Librarything have pages for uploading book information. While each service allows you to upload additional information my understanding is that that other info is only used in cases when the ISBN number for a given work was either missing or malformed.
Hi Trevor,
I am trying to export my citations in Zotero to LibraryThing and found your thread. I tried to install your CSL, but the page cannot be found. Can I find it somewhere else? Where in Zotero am I supposed to install it if I get it somewhere?
Sorry about that! I will see if I can dig up that CSV export CSL that I made. (I migrated webhosts a while ago and it looks like it got misplaced the original. I just remade it and updated the link. So if you download this you should be good to go. http://trevorowens.org/downloads/simple_ISBN_csl.csl
Here is a validating CSL 1.0 version of the same style: https://gist.github.com/1101410
Fantastic! Thanks Rintze! Also, great to hear from you 🙂
Thank you, tjowens and Rintze, it worked.
There is a way to import from goodreads to zotero?
i exported my library as csv files they seem to be working it but have established that it does not like large files though
Hi. I am looking for a way to manage my personal physical library, leveraging my heavy use of Zotero. A friend told me he has been using Librarything (actually TinyCat, which is from Librarything) and in looking into connections between Zotero and Librarything, I found this blog entry. My question is this: a significant number of my books have no ISBN code. Can the system you suggest work without ISBN codes?
I’ll add that a vast majority of my Zotero use has been for academic research; only a very small portion of my personal book collection is entered there. I am looking for a way to get my books into both tools – a personal library cataloging/management system, and Zotero.
Thanks for whatever help you can supply!