I doubt that anything is stored “at Bookends”. Or rather: I hope it’s not. AFAIR, you can download a trial of the software and see for yourself.
Bookends stores documents locally but can also store reference attachments online via iCloud Drive.
Could you be more specific?
- Would it be for digital files (PDFs, E-Books)? A catalogue of physical books you own? Both?
- What would you want to do with this database?
BLUEFROG also asked some questions in a similar vein earlier.
Bookends is a local, private Mac app; it is not web-based.
I entered the search in Bookends and it imported the reference into Bookends; Bookends is built for exactly this function so no reason to try to make DT do what it is not primarily built for.
Once the references are in Bookends, you can use Claude Cowork and the Bookends/DT MCP servers to import the references from Bookends into Devonthink in whatever format you wish.
2 Likes
Isn’t that already possible with older tools? I seem to remember that people worked with Bookends/DT well before any MCP servers arrived on the scene. Perhaps less hassle?
1 Like
DEVONthink has a built-in function to import Bookends references: File > Import > References from Bookends… But I don’t use Bookends, so I have no experience with it.
It is an overlap, and quite a pointless one. It’s just how I set up the database and I’ve never bothered to change it. It’s pleasing to tend to my digital gold books like Smaug though and organise their tags (I also like rearranging my bookshelves). Probably just a form of procrastination 
Searching for a title from the international book catalogues is a task that requires the Internet (I assume that is true of all the apps discussed here since the catalogues will be huge). The actual data you store in the app (the information on your library) is stored locally on your devices (with optional cloud sync across devices if you want it).
As this is the DT server I suspect most of what we recommend here is local-first unless there’s a good reason for it not to be. It’s a big reason we like DT!
I’m not sure there’s that much to differentiate between different book tracking apps really (they’re all serving the same need and I’m not sure how creative you can get with it), but my main criteria were no data tracking, European, and no subscriptions. This eliminated a lot of the options for me but I tried a couple before I settled.
1 Like
Less hassle and infinitely more customizable.
Rather than importing a list of references, I can now import a full academic-quality subject review of dozens of hyperlinked articles including highlights to key passages. Or import it as a MojoPad wiki which I can then edit further myself.
It is a couple orders magnitude step up in what is possible and far surpasses traditional methods of literature review.
[Not saying I would use this to WRITE such a review for pubishing - rather this is a tool for me to RETRIEVE pertinent information which I then apply for professional or academic use.]
A few examples are in my Claude Skill repo here:
3 Likes
wow, impressive! Thank you for sharing this.
I have not tried this; I’m just a reporter here! A couple years ago, when ChatGPT was still fairly new but recently able to analyze images (and do web searching), a friend from college who was an upper-level Google engineer helped a friend of his with a similar problem, taking it as an experiment to explore what generative AI could do. He took photos of his friend’s books laid out in groups on a table, and asked the AI to identify them by their covers (including the editions), collect the metadata, and organize it in some tabular format (perhaps a CSV file). He said he was amazed at how well it worked, and how quickly they were able to complete the task this way.
Thank you for this. As I am preparing for dissertation work I want to ensure I am understanding correctly, Claude is searching within Bookends only, not across the whole web? ie a search is dependent on the sources I have found and saved into Bookends? TY
And if I have a book saved into Bookends, Claude will access the full content of that book as part of its search?
FWIW, BookTracker can do this by scanning barcodes using your phone camera. Doesn’t share your data, doesn’t kill the environment, and little or no risk of hallucinations.
Just because genAI can do something, that doesn’t mean it’s the best tool for the job.
5 Likes
Which part of “this” are you referring to? TY
As @kewms responded to @TLoredo‘s post describing how an AI can find books from their title covers and retrieve their metadata … I’d say that is weißt „this“ refers to.
1 Like
As you say you are a visual learner you might find it interesting to look at Research Rabbit and its mapping of networks of connections between articles and books:
The first phase of doing a PhD consists of learning how to do a PhD …
1 Like
Thank you for this! Did you use this for your PhD, or was that too far "back’ in back in the day?
I started my PhD in 2007, so long before this service was available.
1 Like
Any or all of those are possible - it all depends how you prompt Claude. Or you can have Claude edit the skill to suit your preferences.
I have used Zotero for years. It was developed by and for academics and is top rated. And it’s free!
You can use it entirely within your computer or use Zotero’s cloud storage, and can also collaborate with others on a shared database. You can attach documents, make notes, etc.
Enter the ISBN and you will get all the metadata available. There is a long list of available fields to use, and it will generate the bibliographic reference for you to use in a document according to the standards set by the usual organizations.
I tried Bookends and it couldn’t compete.
1 Like