Zotero and Logos

Jon Bradley said:

Can someone point me towards resources in how to learn to use Zotero alongside Logos ? And how to use Zotero in general?

Thanks!

Hi Jon,

As David has said, there are lots of general training resources on Zotero available.

Beyond that, I find Zotero useful alongside Logos. Zotero has basic capability for notes, but nothing as advanced as Logos Notes, so I make whatever notes I can in Logos, but for resources not in Logos I can make notes in Zotero.

I find that Zotero is useful as a listing of all the resources I either have or need to refer to (I use tags to note which are in Logos and which I have as hard copy on my shelf, as well as some which are available in libraries or are in Kindle or other ebook formats. That allows me to find a book quickly when I can't find it in Logos, where most of my books are). 

Zotero's main feature, at least for many, is how easily resources can be cited in Word documents. I use it for all citations, including those which I have in Logos format.

I also use the most recent version of OneNote for developing workflow and making notes on writing projects. I find that the combination of Logos Notes for Logos resources, Zotero for citation and notes for non-Logos resources, and OneNote for workflow works well for me for my (very few) writing projects (other than sermons and Bible studies).

I also use Zotero for storing webpages, but that is more of a repository of helpful information on topics or illustrations, which I can use later for pastoral purposes or sermon preparation. That use of Zotero has virtually no overlap with using it for resource citation (and occasional non-Logos notes).

I commented previously on Zotero in another thread: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/169685/980584.aspx#980584 

Hi Doug,

 No problem at all. It’d be a pleasure. I'll send you a private message (if I can figure out how to do that) with details. 

Zotero website says it’s a free software.  Is this true or is there a premium you have to pay? I don’t see much information in the website, maybe I’m looking wrong.

DAL

You don't even have to pay if you use large amounts of storage space. You can store that locally for free without restriction. The cost is only if you want to use Zotero's cloud backup and sync. Although that is convenient, I personally use another cloud backup and sync provider and have the Zotero folder stored on the cloud much cheaper as part of a large storage subscription. 

DAL said:

Thanks! I’ll look into it.  It looks very interesting 🧐 I’ve seen y’all mention it in the past but never really looked into it.

Andy Naselli has shared helpful resources on using Zotero:

https://andynaselli.com/personal-theological-library

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdUI_b4RWjk&ab_channel=AndyNaselli 

His video shows using it within Firefox. Personally I use the standalone Zotero installation and use Chrome as a browser. 

john chao said:

Hi, dear David.

I would like to know to export clippings in Logos to RIS format and imported them into Zotero. I successfully made clippings out of the front cover page (including the title, author, and publisher information). How to proceed, can you tell me? Thanks. 

John

For a clippings document in the print/export window RIS is one of the options. https://support.logos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016476711-Printing-and-Exporting 

Jonathan Bradley said:

Hey John, 

Thank you for sharing this. I am quickly using Zotero even more now! 

-Jonathan

[Y]

Vincent van Altena said:

Hi all, 

I have created a LogosZotero group in which I have started to complete the bibliographical information which comes incompetely from an export out of Logos. I try to comply to the SBLHS2 regulations, so you will get nicely formatted references in Word when you use the SBLHS2 citation style. And I have also added L4 links, i.e. double-clicking a reference in zotero will open the resource in Logos.

So far, I have included full bibliographic references for a number of commentaries and several dictionaries (including AYBD).

You can find the group here: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4308977/logosbiblesoftware

It would be nice, if others can start complementing their information to this group, but before doing this, we should agree on a number of guidelines (e.g. to keep everything SBHLHS2 compliant).

Please let me know your thoughts!

~Vincent

Hi Vincent, 

I have tags in my Zotero to indicate where the books are (eBook, Logos, Shelf, ePub, Kindle, Google, etc.), as well as other tags such as a small range of topics, so will need to keep my own entries. I could forward you what I have, 7296 items exported from Logos, with my tags removed.  However, I can't guarantee that they will all fully compliant, since the bibliographic info in Logos might not have exported in as good a way as we would like. Although I have a fair number of them relating to Pauline studies in good order. If you want, I can forward that on to you somehow (not sure how). 

John Duffy

Vincent van Altena said:

Hi John,

Sorry for the delay in response. My idea for the Logos-Zotero group is that it should contain as much as possible correct, i.e. verified information for the resources. I agree Logos does not do a very good job in exporting the data, it is rather incomplete esp. when you need to comply with SBLHS2. 

We could tag the entries in the group with [unverified], [verified], [SBLHS2-compliant], so and that members of the group can use the bibliographic data as provided, or when they need to tailor the info for their own needs (eg. tagging or notes), by copying the entry to their personal bibliography.

But I am of course open to your thoughts.

For file exchange, I will send a PM to the e-mail address on your profile.

Hi Vincent,

I understand. I am very supportive of the idea to have a shared set of SBLHS2-compliant data, to avoid the need for duplication of effort. There are a number of ways to achieve this is. One is to only send SBLHS2-compliant data, another is to send data as-is and achieve compliance by editing it at a later stage. 

Regardless of which way you choose, I would be interested in how you define [unverified], [verified], and [SBLHS2-compliant]. Especially what [SBLHS2-compliant] means for Zotero entries. For example, which fields are not required (e.g. ISBN, no. of pages for a complete book), and what format is required for certain fields (e.g. in 'Place' is the city alone enough or does the county and/or country need to be specified - I'm showing my ignoracne of SBLHS2 here). 

Also, I'm wondering how updates would be managed, particularly with respect to minor edits to improve those which were previously flagged as [SBLHS2-compliant]. 

Having looked into exporting some of my library (the items in Logos), I see that Zotero only allows for export of a complete library, not a selection of items or a collection. Also, I'm not sure how I delete my comments in the 'Extra' field, which sometimes contain research summary notes which I would like to keep confidential. 

This leads me on to wondering how you might keep a central database or information repository. If it were an online spreadsheet, it could be edited by multiple people, or downloaded as and when desired. But Zotero can't import csv files. 

I presume that notes or files to an item would be excluded (e.g. I sometimes attach a webpage which has a book review as a note to a book, or a complete pdf of the book if I happen to have it in pdf format). 

Also, if I wanted to add just a subset of the entries, to supplement my own library, how could I just import those items? I wouldn't be keen on having to merge duplicates for many items, especially in case the merge might result in changing some good entries that I rely on to be correct.

Overall, there seem to be two issues which need addressed. First, which I think you have focused on, is how to ensure that the data is SBLHS2-compliant. Second is how to send, store, and disseminate that data. With the complexities involved for the latter, I'm wondering if simply focusing on the former might be more feasible, at least in the short term. If an online spreadsheet were available with [SBLHS2-compliant] entries for reference purposes, I think that that might provide the majority of the benefit with a minimum of work. 

Lots to think about. 

Scott Cooper said:

Hi everyone,

I just stumbled on this thread. Ironically, I have been working on an export/import process for Logos/Zotero for a few weeks. I just published a blog post on it (below).

I had actually found the Zotero group library that Vincent created a while back and it was what started me on the path to a better solution. What I came up with was a macro-enabled Excel file that you can use to process a SQLite Browser export of your Logos library, generating a RIS file to import into Zotero. It took a lot of work but I now have the ability to export my entire library and import it with a custom tag (similar to what John does) and a link attachment with the L4 link for every resource.

If there are modifications I could make to add more fields, correct errors, or improve it in any way, I would love to know. If anyone is interested in using/testing this, here is the post. A link to the file is in the post or you can just go to the downloads page on my blog. It's the only one there, currently.

Scott

https://threepillarsblog.org/technology/accessing-your-logos-library-in-zotero/

Hi Scott, 

That looks wonderful. Well done. I had in mind to go through the process of exporting another batch of resources to Zotero, those which I obtained over the last year or so (although I've added a few manually, as they were needed for academic essays). Your resources will make that really easy. And I'm looking forward to the much improved data quality too. I love VBA in Excel too, having worked a lot with it in the past in different roles. 

Can you tell me whether the cut-off date is inclusive or exclusive of items exported? In other words, will items be exported which have been added 'after' that date, or 'from' that date?

I'll let you know how I get on, although it might not be until after Christmas before I get a chance to use your process.

Thanks again.

Scott Cooper said:

Hi John,

That is great that you "love VBA," too. LOL. I wasn't expecting to find such an ideal tester! I hope my blog post and/or the embedded instructions are  easy to follow.

Great question...the "filter" that the final list is generated from is found in a hidden worksheet. It is a simple "greater than" the date specified so it excludes the date and anything prior. I tried to maximize the use of formulas and minimize the code.

God bless you and have a Merry Christmas. 

Hi Scott,

I didn't have many resources to import into Zotero, since it was only a few months ago since I did my last export.

I downloaded the file (Logos_RIS_Export_Workbook_v1-0-0).

The first thing I noticed was that the Data sheet was protected. I right-clicked on the tab and selected 'unprotect', that then allowed me to paste the data from my exported csv file into that sheet.

It's probably also worth adding a note that although people can adjust the RIS Type Code, that they can't enter the Logos resource type, but just choose from a shortlist of RIS options. It's obvious once you are aware of that, but at first glance seeing almost all the resources being listed as BOOK seems odd.

However, running the macros/buttons/code didn't work. It returned the error message "No data to copy."

I looked at the VBA code, and in the Sub CopyDataToRIS() and changed "Set dataWs = Worksheets("hidden")" to "Set dataWs = Worksheets("Data")", and then it ran.

If there is a way for cell A1 in the 'hidden' worksheet to work, the number 10007 in the cell range is lower than the number of columns in the Data worksheet (I have 12699 resources). Might that affect it, if the most recently added resources are in the columns at the end? I reverted to the original code and changed 10007 to 100000, but it still came up with "No data to copy." 

Any thoughts?

I have updated the file with support for up to 15,000 rows from the exported CSV. I also added some notes and tested...seems to work fine on my end. Thanks again! I just updated the download with the new file, version 1.1.0.

https://threepillarsblog.org/downloads/

Update: those headers are only the columns that are visible.

Hi John,

Columns BV, BW, and BX should be populated by formulas (actually all the grey fields are). 

I sent you an email.

Thanks for testing and for patience with it!

Scott

Scott Cooper said:

Hi everyone,

I just stumbled on this thread. Ironically, I have been working on an export/import process for Logos/Zotero for a few weeks. I just published a blog post on it (below).

I had actually found the Zotero group library that Vincent created a while back and it was what started me on the path to a better solution. What I came up with was a macro-enabled Excel file that you can use to process a SQLite Browser export of your Logos library, generating a RIS file to import into Zotero. It took a lot of work but I now have the ability to export my entire library and import it with a custom tag (similar to what John does) and a link attachment with the L4 link for every resource.

If there are modifications I could make to add more fields, correct errors, or improve it in any way, I would love to know. If anyone is interested in using/testing this, here is the post. A link to the file is in the post or you can just go to the downloads page on my blog. It's the only one there, currently.

Scott

https://threepillarsblog.org/technology/accessing-your-logos-library-in-zotero/

This is exactly what I need! Thanks for you hard work! I've just been able to skim through your blog post, but if I understand correctly, since I want the URL link and NOT the L4 link, I don't need to bother with the last link cleanups..? I'm mostly using (the unofficial) Logos snap package on Linux, and so the double-click won't open the resource in Logos, anyway. I'd rather have it open it in the web app.

It's also worth mentioning that John found something that was unclear in my instructions on the blog. When you are copying data from the .csv file, you must copy the range of cells, not the entire rows. Otherwise, there are columns with calculated formulas that will be overwritten and it won't work. As long as you're careful to copy the range of cells, everything should work fine.

Jonathan Bradley said:

I don't know if my issue is this or something else, but I follow the steps and when I go to the RIS page on your macro-enabled Excel sheet, it says there's no data. I'm not going to be in front of my computer for most of the day so I won't be able to get a screen shot right now, but I am wondering if you might have any ideas I could try with this?

Jonathan, I had that problem, as Scott noted, when I was pasting rows instead of cells. Pasting rows overwrites the formulas in the columns to the right, which then results in no data. If you just copy the range of cells, not entire rows, as Scott notes, it'll work fine. Scott's method is better and more reliable than any previous method I used to export from Logos to a file and import to Zotero. While I was able to add additional tags to the exported file, it is far easier to just drag all the newly imported resources over an existing tag (I use "_Logos"). I'm using Scott's method from now on. 

Scott, on another point, I'm not sure if you got my email last month about slightly modifying your formula in one of the cells (in the Excel file version 1.1.0). It helps such that resources that have only been modified (but which were 'added' in the past and already exported/imported into Zotero) are not included in the listing of resources to add to Zotero. It adds an additional filter so that the 'date added' must fall within the (optional) date range. In case you didn't get the email, here's the modified formula: 

=IF(Lookups!$F$16<>"",FILTER(Data!B7:B15007,(Data!BN7:BN15007<>"")*(Data!BY7:BY15007>Lookups!$F$16)*(Data!BI7:BI15007<>"0001-01-01T00:00:00+00:00")),FILTER(Data!B7:B15007,Data!BN7:BN15007<>""))

Hi John,

Yes, I got your email. Sorry I haven't gotten back...just got busy over the holidays and am now getting back to normal. [:)]

Thank you for the suggestion and updated formula. I will test it out and likely include it in an update to the file. Much appreciated.

Scott Cooper said:

Hi Tommy,

Glad it's working.

Regarding the language issue, if I understand correctly, I'm thinking it might be by design? Are you referring to the meta data? I would think that would be dependent on the language chosen for the application/interface.

I am aware of the Unicode issue and I have already tried to resolve it but unfortunately, I haven't been able to. I don't remember what exactly I tried but I know I wrestled with it for a while. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

Thanks!

the language issue is not by design, as I see it. At least not a design I would approve of . Some resources have both Greek and English versions. Then it doesn't make much sense that they're both registered as English resources, in my opinion. Other resources are correctly tagged with language.

Scott Cooper said:

I am aware of the Unicode issue and I have already tried to resolve it but unfortunately, I haven't been able to. I don't remember what exactly I tried but I know I wrestled with it for a while. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

Hi Scott, I've come across the encoding issue before too, on other projects. It's not easy to resolve. But after trying a few methods unsuccessfully, I searched online and came across this: https://www.accompa.com/kb/answer.html?answer_id=264

While it seems to be out of date for the latest version of Windows, the steps are now:

Open Excel, click on the Data tab, in the 'Get & Transform Data' group, click on 'From Text/CSV'. Select the file.

On the Import preview, select the 'File Origin' as '65001: Unicode (UTF-8)'. Click 'Load'. Once the data has loaded, save the file as an Excel file. 

Then, copy the cells as in the your instructions. 

That worked for me in a quick test, for apostrophes etc. I expect it would work for non-English or non-basic ASCI characters too more generally. 

Scott Cooper said:

I'm probably just not understanding the language tagging issue. Can you post a screenshot?

Scott, the issue is simply this:

John,

Your method for fixing the file encoding issue seems to work perfectly...I only tested as far as the data import but it looks great...THANK YOU! If you just use the defaults, Excel will bring it into a new worksheet, then you can highlight and copy/paste the range from there, then just delete the newly created sheet.

Tommy,

I understand the language issue, now. You are correct...using the "Languages" field, rather than "MetadataLanguage" will work. I hadn't even noticed that. I have the Perseus Library, too...pointing that out helped me see what you were referring to. Yes, I can update this in the next version. It changes the language code list on the Lookups tab but I'll figure it out. Some of the language abbreviations are ones I'm not familiar with. One of my 4200 test records came in as a string of a bunch: "en es pt fr de ko zh-Hans zh-Hant". Not sure how to handle that or how common it might be for records to have multiple languages. Do you think there's value in importing multiple languages in the "Language" field in Zotero or maybe just the first one listed? (the vast majority of resources are a single language).

Thank you both so much for helping out with this!

I'm sorry, John...I was not clear. I was just referring to when you said: "Open Excel...Once the data has loaded, save the file as an Excel file." I just meant the defaults for importing into the *same* file. You do still need to select UTF-8.

Scott Cooper said:

Tommy,

I understand the language issue, now. You are correct...using the "Languages" field, rather than "MetadataLanguage" will work. I hadn't even noticed that. I have the Perseus Library, too...pointing that out helped me see what you were referring to. Yes, I can update this in the next version. It changes the language code list on the Lookups tab but I'll figure it out. Some of the language abbreviations are ones I'm not familiar with. One of my 4200 test records came in as a string of a bunch: "en es pt fr de ko zh-Hans zh-Hant". Not sure how to handle that or how common it might be for records to have multiple languages. Do you think there's value in importing multiple languages in the "Language" field in Zotero or maybe just the first one listed? (the vast majority of resources are a single language).

Thank you, Andrew,

It seems Logos is using a mishmash of the ISO codes: https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php

On that list, in the ISO 639-2 alpha-3 codes, Arabic is 'ara'.

I also have a resource in Slavonic that is coded as 'sla' which does not appear to be an ISO code so I omitted that from my spreadsheet. I like standards. [:)]