I have a problem because I'm using both Word and Zotero footnotes. I'm a historian using both primary and secondary sources, and I'm using regular Word footnotes for primary sources (since each source is unique), and Zotero only for my secondary sources. The problem is that if I have a Zotero footnote for a particular source, then several intervening primary source notes, then another Zotero note for the same source as above, the footnote comes out as "Ibid," even when the note immediately above it is a totally different primary source. No amount of refreshing, closing and opening the document, etc. changes that. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to fix this problem? Entering my 10,000+ primary sources into Zotero is not an option, unfortunately.

The other option (which is admittedly unfortunate) is to use only Zotero's quick copy function to produce footnotes to your clipboard, and paste them into zotero.
This lets you have ultimate control over how your footnotes look. The price is that you have to give up some automation. You're back to manually adding Ibids, and then changing them when you insert an intervening footnote.

I wonder if there would be a way to add a small hack to the Word plugin which would allow the insertion of a 'dummy' item, the effect of which would be to force the citation processor to clear its memory of the immediately previous item. This would help for other cases when a person has to throw in the odd hand-composed citation for things which Z doesn't handle yet (including original version or original-language information, or "Title of a Multi-volume Set."

This is a real problem. It would be nice if Zotero could properly handle primary source material. One partial solution is to enter the bibliographic data into zotero as best you can, making sure you fill in the "second citation" field. It can handle second citations very well. The only cleanup required before publication then would be fixing the first instances of primary source material.

This might become cumbersome if you are doing work where you cite tons of documents in a work. (In my writing, I tend not to use more than 3-5 primary sources most of the time, unless I do a survey of opinions at the beginning of a paper).

Hello, I'm a new user, this is my first forum post. Regarding "ibid," I'm also a historian. The convention in my field now, by and large, is that "ibid" is obsolete. The Chicago Manual of Style and Turabian (the newest versions) both discourage using the term in citation, as do most scholarly journal style sheets.

The reason is that because now, in the electronic age, cutting and pasting is easy. If an "ibid" reference is cut and pasted somewhere else in the document, it no longer refers to the preceding citation.

Can the Zotero interface be tweaked to have an option that allows/disallows "ibid?" Not a huge deal, I can correct the citations manually, but it would be nice. Thanks.

I wish that the Chicago Manual of Style did in fact discourage Ibid., but I find no such evidence in the 15th edition. Please let us know if you find otherwise. As Dan points out, we do offer a no-Ibid. version, and if CMS indicates that Ibid. is deprecated, we'll happily follow those changes.

Sorry, my bad. My colleagues told me that Chicago claimed ibid was going out of style. Turns out that's not true. The latest Turabian makes ibid "optional," and Turabian is based on Chicago; maybe that's where the confusion came from. Anyway, I'll double-check my sources next time.

http://anotherhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/ibid-rip.html

I'd offer the Turabian section or page #, but I own Turabian sixth edition, not the seventh.

Thanks for the styles page tip.