Search items
Items in the library matching a phrase, tag, item type or collection, with title, creators, year and tags.
MCP tool zotero_read → search_items
read
Searches titles and creators by default; set full_text to include the text of attachments. Filter by tag, item type or collection, or show only items in no collection. Results are items with their keys; use get_item for the fields and notes of one item.
Parameters
| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| library string | string | 'me' for My Library (default) or a group library ID from list_libraries. |
| query string | string | Phrase to find in titles and creators. |
| full_text boolean | boolean | true also searches the text of attachments. |
| tag string | string | Only items with this tag. |
| item_type string | string | Only this item type, e.g. 'journalArticle' or 'book'. |
| collection_key string | string | Collection key from list_collections. |
| unfiled boolean | boolean | true lists only items in no collection. |
| added_since datetime | datetime | Only items added after this time. |
| limit integer | integer | Maximum number of items to return. |
| cursor string | string | Next page cursor from the previous call. |
tools/call
{
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"id": 1,
"method": "tools/call",
"params": {
"name": "zotero_read",
"arguments": {
"operation": "search_items",
"arguments": {}
}
}
}Example response
{
"content": [
{
"type": "text",
"text": "{ ... same JSON as structuredContent ... }"
}
],
"structuredContent": {
"items": [
{
"item_key": "H6R2VB5D",
"title": "Sparse attention for long documents",
"item_type": "journalArticle",
"creators": [
"Lee, M.",
"Okafor, T."
],
"year": 2025,
"tags": [
"transformers"
],
"collections": [
"C4T8WZ2N"
]
},
{
"item_key": "N9Q4XA7E",
"title": "A survey of retrieval for question answering",
"item_type": "journalArticle",
"creators": [
"Novak, P."
],
"year": 2024,
"tags": [],
"collections": []
}
],
"total": 2,
"next_cursor": null
},
"isError": false
}