Link Zotero to a Logos Book

I am trying to figure out if there is any way to link a Zotero reference to a Logos book.

I have successfully (in general) exported my Logos 5 library to Zotero, but I would like to hyperlink that reference in Zotero back to the Logos book. Since Zotero can link to web pages and pdfs, it seemed like it should be able to somehow link to my Logos book.

However, I have attempted numerous ways of trying to use the Logos "Copy Location" info to attach correctly in Zotero so that it will open Logos and the book. But everything I have done so far Zotero either ignores or rejects the input for. I've attempted both to attach it somehow as a link to the resource, and I have tried to just create a hyperlink in a note attached to the resource, but so far nothing has been successful.

Has anyone else succeeded at doing this and if so, how?

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Rosie Perera

Hadn't tried it before but just tried it now, and so far nothing is working.

I tried editing the HTML of a note directly and inserting this: <a href=logosres:4vlordsupp;ref=Page.p_3>Click here</a>

But that didn't work either.

Will let you know if I figure something out.

So best you can do for now is paste the Logos URL into a Note, and then when you want to go to that book, copy it and paste it into the Logos command bar.

Scott

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/458198#Comment_458198

Yeah, I had tried a similar direct editing of the html, but it seems that Zotero changes the file path info anyway, so it ends up not directly linking as it should. Thanks for your efforts.

Timothy Brown

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/458198#Comment_458198

Zotero can be linked to a Logos book as follows. Right click on the book and in the drop down click on "Add Attachment" and "Attach Link to URl."

Put the URL of the Logos book in the box that appears. Then you have an attachment with a link in it like this:

In Windows 8.1 clicking on the link in the attachment the first time brings up the following dialog:

Check the box for "Remember my choice..." and OK. From then on, clicking on links in Zotero attachments opens the resource in Logos directly.

toughski

Scott, Timothy,

I am trying to get started with Zotero, but exporting my Logos5 bibliography to it produced a LOT of empty entries, over 320 duplicate books, etc. (they could possibly be journal articles or books with several authors, I could not make sense to of it). I followed the instructions in this L4 blog to the letter, but I guess,things changed a bit since then. Could you help me with a step by step process of exporting Logos5 bibliography to Zotero? I would be most grateful.

Vladimir

Timothy Brown

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/562084#Comment_562084

Unfortunately, I probably will not be of much help to you. I also got a fair number of blanks when exporting the bibliography to Zotero. All of the issues of the Biblical Archaeology Review were blank. So were all of the Duke papyri items from Perseus. (I just deleted those. I'm never going to cite them anyway.)

I didn't know about the blog post, so I did the exporting a little differently, but probably with the same result you had. I made a collection of All Resources (rating:<6 ), which I opened. Then I clicked Ctrl + P to print the collection. In the Print/Export dialog box, I saved as a file in BibTex Style, because I knew Zotero would accept that. I imported that file into Zotero.

It seems that the Logos bibliographical information transfers poorly into BibTex for some resources, especially dictionaries. For example, in your list of blanks, I see DeMoss as a "creator." I had a blank for the same resource. By searching my Logos library, I found the book: DeMoss, M. S. (2001). Pocket dictionary for the study of New Testament Greek. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. In dealing with the blanks, in some cases I've filled in the missing information by hand. In other cases, I just look up the book in WorldCat.org. The Firefox plug-in for Zotero pulls all the information from WorldCat, and then the blank entry that came from Logos can be sent to the trash. Most of my resources were imported into Zotero with adequate bibliographical information, but it is time-consuming to deal with those that were partially blank. By clicking on the item, you can usually figure out what the resource is and look it up in your Logos library.

(I tried importing a file in RIS Style into Zotero, just to see if it would work better than BibTex. Zotero didn't accept it.)

Sorry not to be of more help. I do appreciate having all my commentaries, whether Logos, Kindle, pdf download or print, in Zotero, so I can easily see what I have.

M G Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/562207#Comment_562207

I have done some investigation which has resulted in the following:

Step 1: Create a collection of all your resources.

Go to Tools > Collections. A new collection named Unnamed Collection will be created. Click on that title and rename it something like All, and then enter rating:>=0 into the “Start with resources matching” box. This will find all resources with a rating of 0 or higher, which is equivalent to all resources. If you don’t want to export all of your resources, create a collection of just the ones you want.

Step 2: Export your collection.

With that collection opened, click on the panel menu (top left on the Collections tab) and choose “Print/Export ...”. The Print/Export settings box will open in a new window and Logos 5 will generate a preview. (This may take some time if you have a large library.)

Step 3: Choose the settings in the Print/Export window.

On the left hand side click the "Bibliography only" box. A dropdown menu will then appear allowing you to select a citation style; choose "Bib/Tex Style". Logos will now re-generate a preview to reflect the changed settings, again this may take a while.

When the preview has been generated, on the lower right hand side of the Print/Export window, click on "Text Document" under "Save as file:". Choose a name and a location to save the file and again wait until Logos has finished.

Step 4: Import your file into Zotero.

In Zotero, click on the Actions button (gear wheel) and choose Import. Select the text file just created and click Open. Depending on how many resources you’re importing, it may take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes.Once importing is complete, in an ideal world, we would be ready to go. Sadly we must take some further steps.

Step 5: Identifying problems.

Zotero will have created a Collection under My Library with the name of the text file you used to import your Logos 5 bibliography. You may wish to rename the collection (Right click and select "Rename Collection ...".

With that Collection selected on the left hand side (rather than 'My Library' which contains all material you have gathered in Zotero) you are very likely to see some problems. Mostly these will be blanks, as Toughski has illustrated above. I have identified at least four distinct categories within Logos 5 which are likely to give problems:

1. Those titles which Logos identifies as type Encyclopedia;

2. Those titles which Logos identifies as type Lexicon;

3. Those titles which Logos identifies as type Journal;

4. Perseus collection titles. (IMHO The problems here are probably too many to justify the time and effort involved in resolving them).

STEP 6: Solving (at least) some problems.

The solution to 1-3 involves editing the text file generated by Logos 5 which you have imported to Zotero. However, before you get started on that you may wish to delete what was originally imported into Zotero. To do this, right click on the Collection your import created in Zotero (it will be a subfolder of 'My Library'). Select 'Delete Collection and items ...'. DO NOT select 'Delete Collection' as this will leave all entries for your Logos books still in 'My Library'. Remember that Zotero keeps everything in 'My Library' and Collections effectively only contain copies.

Now to edit the text file. For Encyclopedias, Lexicons, and Journals, search for '@misc' (without the quotes) which you will find in the first line of an entry; change this to @book. However, do not attempt a search and replace (that would be too easy!). In that same entry, change 'journal=' to 'title=' and (in the case of Journals), 'publisher=' to 'series=' (again without the quotes).

Here we go again.

Now repeat step 4. You are unlikely to have solved all problems and so repeating steps 5 and 6 is also necessary. Under step 6 you may wish to look for entries where the title line is missing, or some other detail that you would wish to see. Continue until you are satisfied.

One last point: Zotero lists all entries with the same title and author as duplicates. You can see those titles which Zotero considers duplicates by clicking 'Duplicate Items' towards the bottom of the 'My Library' list. This feature of Zotero means that if you have 73 volumes of the Westminster Theological Journal (for example) they will all be listed as duplicates even though the volume number is different in each case. Thus, it may not be worth getting overly concerned about duplicates.

I hope some of this may be helpful.

toughski

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/562595#Comment_562595

I hope some of this may be helpful.

THANK YOU!

it was very helpful.

Timothy Brown

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/562595#Comment_562595

Thanks very much, M.G.

Fr Devin Roza

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/562666#Comment_562666

Thanks M G, very helpful.

M G Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/562690#Comment_562690

CORRECTION

The second paragraph of Step 6 should read:

Now to edit the text file. For Encyclopedias and Lexicons, search for '@misc' (without the quotes) and for Journals, search for '@article', which you will find in the first line of an entry; change these to '@book'. However, do not attempt a search and replace (that would be too easy!). In these same entries, change 'journal=' to 'title='. The entries for different Journals vary but you may wish to add a series entry with the same info as the title. For example, to 'title={Westminster Theological Journal},' add, (in a new line) 'series={Westminster Theological Journal},'.(again without quotes).

ADDITIONS

I also found some entries with '@unpublished' which should be changed to '@book'. Most of my personal books seem to be listed as '@book' with no further information. Where a title has an editor or translator these may be listed as 'author='. Where an editor is correctly identified then the word Editor is often/always added to the end of the name. For example, 'editor={Elrington, Charles RichardEditor},'.

In summary, the work of correcting needs to be done on the text file generated by Logos 5. Just remember to delete the previous import you made to Zotero before importing a corrected version of the text file.

toughski

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/562720#Comment_562720

appreciate it!

Seth I. Grotzke

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/562774#Comment_562774

I have exported my logos English library to zotero, however I just purchased a Spanish base package and now have another batch of books to import. Do I have to do it all over again, or is there a way to just export the new base package?

M G Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/604059#Comment_604059

I hadn't got round to facing this problem yet, and the solution that I can see working is not straightforward. However, it should save all the work of exporting your whole library and correcting the text file before importing to Zotero (as described above).

Step 1: create a new collection called 'updates to 2014_06_20' or similar.

Creating the blank collection is the easy part, filling it is the problem.

Click on the library icon to open that window and then click on the heading of the 'Last Updated' column until the most recent additions appear at the top of that column. (If the 'Last Updated' column is not displayed then right click on the bar immediatedly above the books in the Library window and select it from the list of possible columns). Select those titles that have been added (and updated!!!) since you last exported your library to Zotero and add them to your newly created 'Updated Collection'. You can do this by dragging them one by one from the Library window and dropping them on the '+ Plus these resources:' area of your 'Updated Collection' window.

The problem with this approach is that the updated list contains both titles that are new to your library (these are the ones you want) and titles which have been updated by Logos (which you have already exported to Zotero and therefore do not want/need to export again). If you can spot which are which then proceed, otherwise, in your web browser log into your Logos account and on the Orders page click the Order History tab and use the details displayed to identify which titles are new to your library and add these to your new collection, as described.

This approach (there may be a better one!) will allow the adding of new titles since the last export to Zotero, however, it may not help with a new base package unless it is possible to identify the new titles it contains.

Step 2: Use this new 'Updated Collection' to export.

Follow the (six) steps in my post above (as later corrected) but instead of using the collection containing all of your library (as described there) use your new 'Updated Collection'.

I hope this helps, although others may come up with a better solution.

Mike Miller

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/604059#Comment_604059

You could can create a collection that will only contain your Spanish books. Use language:spanish in "Start with" field as a new collections. Then you could export just the Spanish books. This should help at least to export your Spanish base backage.

Héctor Pérez

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/562657#Comment_562657

Thanks very much, M.G.

Mark Payne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/604098#Comment_604098

Very helpful, MG. Logos should update their post on the topic with your instructions!

A question for everyone - Is there a way for the bibliography export from Logos to include a URL to the book, which can then be used to populate the URL field in Zotero?

This would be great, because if you just click on the URL in Zotero it takes you to the book online and also pops up a box asking if you want to open that book in Logos on the desktop.

Vadim

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/939760#Comment_939760

It looks like the logosres: is not working properly in the latest version of Zotero (5.0.45) and Logos (7.14). The URI simply opens Logos on my mac, but not the actual resource.

Simon’s Brother

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/604059#Comment_604059

I have exported my logos English library to zotero, however I just purchased a Spanish base package and now have another batch of books to import. Do I have to do it all over again, or is there a way to just export the new base package?

For someone doing this now the best solution would be to tag everything upon your first export with zotero. When you come to a subsequent export to update Zotero you only need to create export based on those items not tagged.

Daniel Bya Lu

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/562595#Comment_562595

Thank you!