diff --git a/src/DocumentLibrary/FileConverters/pdf.py b/src/DocumentLibrary/FileConverters/pdf.py
index 12707e0..7247ce7 100644
--- a/src/DocumentLibrary/FileConverters/pdf.py
+++ b/src/DocumentLibrary/FileConverters/pdf.py
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 """PDF to text file converter for Document Library"""
 
 from os import popen, remove
+from codecs import lookup
 
 content_type = 'application/pdf'
 
@@ -13,7 +14,13 @@
     """Convert pdf data to raw text"""
     
     tmp_name = documentFile._writeToTempFile()
-    text = popen('pdftotext %s -' % tmp_name).read()
+    text_fd = popen('pdftotext %s -' % tmp_name)
+    # cope with default latin-1 encoding if possible
+    try:
+        reader = lookup('latin-1')[2](text_fd)
+        text = reader.read()
+    except:
+        text = text_fd.read()
     remove(tmp_name)
     
     return text