alt Hacker NewsI just finished importing and sorting thousands of PDF research papers, about 50 GB I've accumulated over the decades. Originally, I was sorting them in file system directly, but the whole thing got out of hand at some point, and thus the Documents folder became a dumping ground for PDFs. So I decided to take control of the situation and use Zotero to manage all this stuff. First I used Claude Code to generate all the BibTex files for the PDFs, then sort them into categories (still on the filesystem). Then created a master bibtex file that lists all the docs in each category. I used that to bulk import in Zotero, which then normalised all the file names once imported. What's really cool is that you can use Zotero built in web APIs to get an external tool to manipulate your collection directly. I've also setup WebDAV to sync the entire collection across multiple machines. Can you do all these without Zotero? Absolutely. And I did, but can't say I'll be looking back any time soon.
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> First I used Claude Code to generate all the BibTex files for the PDFs
I think this has an unnecessary risk of hallucinated bibliographic data. For anyone doing something similar in the future, it would be more reliable to make a LLM generate a list of DOIs and have Zotero import the DOIs.
At least with Zotero Version 6, you could have just selected all your PDFs and drag-n-dropped them into the interface.
Like another poster here, trusting an LLM with my reference database -- the ultimate source of truth -- is not a step I'd be willing to take. All it takes is a single hallucinated reference, and your career would be forever tainted. It's not worth the risk.
Sadly, Zotero seems to have removed this killer import feature in later versions, which is the reason I keep using version 6. It feels like later versions have been a route to dumbing-down the interface, prioritising simplicity (and an ultra-low-contrast interface) at the expense of functionality. (If you can still drag-n-drop PDFs straight in with the new versions, someone please let me know?)