Switching bookmarks from Firefox to Zotero?

September 6, 2008 9:21 PM

data.kluge.filter -- I have many, many Firefox bookmarks. I'd really like to switch my bookmarking system to Zotero, which seems much more powerful. Have you already solved this? Can you figure out a chain of format conversions that will get me from point FF to point Z?

Bonus points if your solution doesn't involve any costly proprietary software. ("Free to try" software is fine, since I'd only need to use it for twenty minutes of conversion.)

Can you recommend specific third-party conversion apps? Other reference managers that would work as "stepping-stones"? I'm not really a codehead, but... perl or ruby scripts? Right now the best solution I can think of involves building an elaborate AutoHotKey script that would load one bookmark at a time and then Zotero-save each one, and that's slightly more headache than I'm up for.

The following formats definitely export FROM Firefox:
- bookmarks in any other browser
- an html page that lists each bookmark as a link

The following formats definitely import INTO Zotero:
- BibTeX
- Zotero RDF
- MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema)
- RIS
- Refer/BibIX
- Unqualified Dublin Core RDF

This page lists which other reference managers can convert into which formats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software

This link may also be useful:
http://www.zotero.org/documentation/frequently_asked_questions#importexport_and_creating_bibliographies1


Thanks to all who can contribute suggestions! Partial solutions, that *nearly* bridge the gap, are also helpful.

posted by pluckemin to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

with the del.icio.us plugin you can export firefox bookmarks to del.icio.us. not sure if this helps, but with the del.icio.us userbase, there's probably some homemade solution out there to get it into one of those formats.
posted by almostmanda at 9:45 PM on September 6, 2008

Are you definitely lining up these bookmarks to use them as references to cite in papers, etc? If not, del.icio.us will be a better experience, even with the kludgy new redesign.
posted by tmcw at 10:40 PM on September 6, 2008

I don't think I've heard of tools that can convert Delicious bookmarks into those formats, but it seems like Connotea can import Firefox bookmarks files and export RIS files.

Naturally I also recommend giving Delicious a try to see if it's useful to you, but I'm not sure what kind of "powerful" you're looking for.
posted by dreamyshade at 12:02 AM on September 7, 2008

Do you have a university or library affiliation that gives you access to RefWorks? If you do, you can import in del.icio.us bookmarks via RefWorks' RSS feed import tool, then export them to Zotero in RIS.

However, if you plan to use Zotero to generate citations, you're still going to be missing a ton of metadata - for example, in the Author field you're going to get your del.icio.us username instead of the author of the item.
posted by zepheria at 10:12 AM on September 7, 2008

Hmm, each Delicious RSS feed for bookmarks is limited to 100 items (see the help page), so using those feeds may not work that well for handling many bookmarks.
posted by dreamyshade at 12:44 PM on September 7, 2008