Book Helper is a native macOS app for turning poorly named book PDFs into useful Zotero items.
Drop in one or more PDFs and Book Helper will:
- scan the document and filename for ISBNs;
- look up title, authors, publisher, year, and ISBN;
- fall back to title/author filename matching or Library of Congress metadata;
- let you review and correct the title;
- rename the PDF without rewriting its contents; and
- create a Zotero book item with the PDF attached.
Download the signed and notarized Apple-silicon beta from the Book Helper 1.0 beta 1 release page.
Book Helper 1.0 beta 1 requires macOS 13 or later. Drag the app to Applications and open it normally.
- Drop one or more PDFs into Book Helper.
- Review the detected metadata. Enter an ISBN manually if none was found.
- Select the books you want to process.
- Choose Rename PDFs and/or Import to Zotero.
Zotero must be open for import. Book Helper creates a book item and attaches the local PDF through Zotero's connector service.
Book Helper queries Open Library and Google Books for ISBN metadata, with a Library of Congress fallback. Zotero communication stays on the local machine at 127.0.0.1. The app does not require or store Zotero credentials and does not use ReadCube Papers.
Xcode 15 or later is required.
xcodebuild -project PapersImporter/PapersImporter.xcodeproj \
-scheme BookHelper \
-configuration Release \
-derivedDataPath /tmp/bookhelper-deriveddata \
CONFIGURATION_BUILD_DIR="$PWD/build" \
buildThe app bundle is written to build/Book Helper.app.
MIT