# Zotero Annotations and Metadata Importer
**URL:** https://community.silverbullet.md/t/zotero-annotations-and-metadata-importer/3998
**Category:** Plugs and Libraries
**Created:** [March 29, 2026, 8:02am UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/zotero-annotations-and-metadata-importer/3998 "2026-03-29T08:02:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Hyph](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/Hyph)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2026, 8:02am UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/zotero-annotations-and-metadata-importer/3998/1 "2026-03-29T08:02:13Z")
My very first library! Saw a few options floating around for importing metadata from Zotero, but wanted to take it a step further and import highlights and notes from PDFs in as well so that Silverbullet could remain the 'single point of truth' while still getting to keep Zotero's functionality for citation management etc. Not sure how much overlap there is between Zotero and Silverbullet, but oh well.
was inspired by [this](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/how-do-you-do-citations-in-sb/3029) old thread, and I borrowed quite a lot from @Mr.Red's [media manager](https://github.com/Mr-xRed/silverbullet-libraries/blob/main/MediaManager.md), I hope you don't mind!
Repo is here: [SilverBullet---Zotero-Annotations-and-Metadata-Importer/Library.md at main · hihyph/SilverBullet---Zotero-Annotations-and-Metadata-Importer · GitHub](https://github.com/hihyph/SilverBullet---Zotero-Annotations-and-Metadata-Importer/blob/main/Library.md)
Functionality:
- Once set up, run Zotero: Import Item, a window will pop up.
- Enter part or all of any title in your Zotero library. All matching Items will appear on a list, choose the one you want.
- Page will be created. You will be taken to the page automatically.
And that's it!
The space-lua might be a bit convoluted, as I say I'm very new at all this, so feedback is more than welcome.
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### Author:  [@Al3cLee](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/Al3cLee)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2026, 6:28pm UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/zotero-annotations-and-metadata-importer/3998/2 "2026-04-03T18:28:20Z")
This is so cool. I was considering building a similar thing haha...
Quick question, importing seems to rely on zotero sync? If I do not have all items synced with zotero cloud, is it still possible to locally let zotero and SB talk to each other?
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### Author:  [@Hyph](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/Hyph)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2026, 1:21am UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/zotero-annotations-and-metadata-importer/3998/4 "2026-04-04T01:21:46Z")
Thank you!
Yeah, I did it via zotero sync because they have such good documentation on their online api so it was just easier.
Theoretically you could do it locally as long as Silverbullet and Zotero are on the same machine, but you might run into issues with the zotero program having to be running for it to work.
I believe there are some self hosted sync options for zotero which might work if you can be bothered, but I haven't done this myself.