Creating Zotero Citations for Archival Documents

DEVONthink
1

Hi everyone,

I’m conducting archival research and am trying to refine my workflow for managing citations from primary source documents stored in DEVONthink.

My goal is to capture archival metadata for each document (repository, collection, series, box, folder, document title, dates, etc.), generate proper citations from that metadata, and then export those citations into Zotero for use in my writing.

I’ve come across the DEVONthink for Historians SuperAnnotate Template, which looks very close to what I’m trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, it appears that workflow was designed around Bookends, and the accompanying course and documentation have since been taken down.

I’m wondering if anyone has developed a similar workflow that works with Zotero instead. Are you using custom metadata, templates, AppleScript, Markdown, or another approach to preserve archival metadata in DEVONthink and get it into Zotero without having to re-enter everything manually?

I’d love to hear how other historians or archival researchers are handling this. Even if your workflow isn’t identical, I’d appreciate any ideas or examples.

Thanks!

2

You could easily do this if you used Bookends instead of Zotero and then used the new Bookends MCP and the skill I posted recently.

There is also a Zotero MCP which I believe works based on the Zotero API - you could create a similar Claude Skill to integrate Zotero with Devonthink. Zotero integration is not quite as bulletproof as Bookends because Zotero is not AppleScriptable like Bookends.