[edited: These changes will be in the next major release to succeed Zotero 3.0, not 2.1 or 3.0.]

The upcoming release of Zotero 2.1 final is likely to include several (minor) additions and changes to the current set of Zotero item types (e.g. "Book Section") and fields (e.g. "Book Title"). These changes require careful consideration, since they not only affect how bibliographic data is imported, exported and synced, but also how this data can be formatted with Citation Style Language (CSL) styles.

Several members of the Zotero and CSL communities have written up a preliminary list of changes, available at https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/wiki/Zotero-types-whiteboard. At this point, we would like to call for feedback from Zotero developers and users. Ideally, in the next few weeks, we would like to expand and refine this list so we end up with a collection of well-documented requests that increase the usability of Zotero while minimizing the disruption for existing users.

In considering changes to item types and fields, it is important to remember that item types in Zotero are best understood as a set of fields and a set of ways they tend to be styled. That means that the best argument for new fields or types is that a certain type of data or citation is presently impossible to represent in Zotero. In addition, it is important to note that CSL has its own set of fields (called CSL variables) and item types, and that a mapping is used to make Zotero data accessible to CSL styles. Finally, a small update to CSL 1.0 might be released along Zotero 2.1, which would allow for the addition of new CSL variables.

Comments and contributions can be posted in this thread or in the relevant existing forum threads that discuss changes to item types. You can also request direct access to the wiki on GitHub (see the wiki for details).

[edited for clarity per Rintze's suggestions]

Greg: This isn't the place for feature requests.

- I like the dataset type

Then can you help to fill out the set of fields we'd need for such a type? I really don't know what the type will need.

dataset type - I have been using webpages for that type sofar and I like the idea of not doing it anymore. Attaching stuff such as the survey-instrument or the user-manual is very convenient. I guess important fields are title, creator, distributing institution, abstract, URL, date/collection period, citation required for publications with this dataset, abbreviation...

I am not sure how the citation required for publications with this dataset should work because sometimes these are books, sometimes, articles. It would be nice to have a dataset type though and when you cite this the correct citation is used.

There has been a semi-frequently expressed to desire to make 'document' as generic as possible. That is somewhat better-reflected in ticket 867 than the whiteboard. To make a strong generic type, should document just have every field possible?

I would like to see this happen.

wpwend - thanks for contributing but that's not yet specific enough to be helpful.
As per ajlyon's post above:

In considering changes to item types and fields, it is important to remember that item types in Zotero are best understood as a set of fields and a set of ways they tend to be styled. That means that the best argument for new fields or types is that a certain type of data or citation is presently impossible to represent in Zotero.

The question is - can you currently cite a play correctly in your preferred citation styles? If yes, we don't need a new item type. If not, why not?

Well, how should they be cited?
The purpose of types in Zotero is not to distinguish between different items analytically, unless that's relevant for citation purposes.
You can use tags etc. for that purpose.

Back to Dataset - using the things Rintze links to, I see three issues that might make a dataset category worthwhile:

1. The hdl and UNF handlers - so fart those aren't very common - they're a project of Gary King out of Harvard that has, so far, not really caught up - not even in PoliSci, which is Gary's main discipline. In any case - hdl's are a form of URL and should go in that field - I'd add the UNF - so this doesn't really require an item type

2. Separate info for producer and distributor - APSA requires this for ICPSR (the largest data repository for the social sciences) - and I'd assume that's also the case for sociology

Eldersveld, Samuel J., John E. Jackson, M. Kent Jennings, Kenneth Lieberthal, Melanie Manion, Michael Oksenberg, Zhefu Chen, Hefeng He, Mingming Shen, Qingkui Xie, Ming Yang, and Fengchun Yang. 1996. Four-County Study of Chinese Local Government and Political Economy, 1990 [computer file] (Study #6805). ICPSR version. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan/Beijing, China: Beijing University [producers], 1994. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1996.

I have no thoughts on this - but this might require a separate field.

3. Data Sets are given a different status - in some styles they are treated like monographs with the title in italics (e.g. APA). In some styles (such as the one given on http://thedata.org/citation/standard ) they are treated as articles and put in quotation marks. In the third set of styles (such as the APSA style) they are treated as neither and given in normal font without quotation marks, although monographs are in italics and articles in quotation marks otherwise.

At least in the disciplines I know - PoliSci, Sociology, and Economics - I have never seen any of the other requested information on the various data set threads (such as sampling group etc.) in any citation.
Imho so far this doesn't look like a separate data set type is needed. It would be good to hear from some other disciplines, though - I'm thinking geography, psych, maybe some of the statistically oriented life-sciences like epidemiology etc.

New issue:
I would like to see a "type" variable included in book. That would help e.g. for styles that want things like "ebook" "digital image" or even "kindle book" listed. I'll dig up the links when I get the chance - erazlogo once said she didn't like the idea, so I wanted to open that for discussion rather than just adding it to the list on github

ah yes, I had forgotten about the medium variable - that would be better, I think.

@Rintze & adamsmith: I agree that Format should be added to Book/Book Section -- but I worry that we might need to add it to even more formats. I went ahead and added it to the whiteboard.

That would require changes to CSL as well, as there is currently nothing to map "reviewed title" and "reviewed author"/"reviewed editor" to.

Frank's mapping overview ( http://gsl-nagoya-u.net/http/pub/csl-fields/index.html ) doesn't include creator roles, so I'm not sure.

So reviewed author is currently just ignored?

It turns out that reviewed author is used in Bibliontology RDF export, import from the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, and that's all. It is item type "reviewedAuthor" (id 27), but it doesn't look like Zotero maps it to anything for CSL, unlessed I've missed something in my code-diving.

I think that this discussion has pretty much ended; if anyone has additional proposals that are not reflected on the whiteboard, now would be the time to add them. Otherwise, it's probably time to clean up the present proposals and make a final list of specific changes.

As we do so, we still need clarification on:
* Artwork. The whiteboard has no concrete proposals on what can or should be changed with that type. Without some clarification and justification, it's not going to happen for 2.1.
* Music Score. Older discussions acknowledges the need, but we have no details on necessary fields.
* Exhibition Catalogue
* Series Titles and Series Text. These fields are unclear to begin with-- the whiteboard includes a proposal to repurpose one as "section"; see the whiteboard.

Between these changes, standalone, and multilingual, the 2.1 release of Zotero is going to be a very exciting one.

@ajlyon: agreed that field hiding would be very nice. There will be other fields that many users won't use, like the proposed original-date/original-publisher/original-publisher-place fields.

I created tickets for most of the things discussed on the zotero-bits github wiki:

https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/issues

There are still a few open questions, so comments are welcome.

1. Right-click on the title to use the very limited transformation options. You should generally use sentence case in Zotero, since styles can force title case if necessary (right?)

2. See https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/issues#issue/8

Thanks for the info ajlyon and adamsmith. good plan to use sentence case as default.

Sorry to post 1. here. (FYI, MLA and MLA with URL styles are not Title Case-ing Sentence cased titles - i will try to find another place to post that.)

Okay, I'm a musicologist but not a librarian (I'll contact a librarian for input), but here's the big difference: a music score is basically a book, for item type, but instead of "author" there needs to be a "composer" field. The other features of the "book" item are useful (such as publisher, editor, etc, etc.), but other useful features would be something like "orchestration" or "parts" and then maybe a work index number, such as "opus" (but not all composers use opus numbers, so that could just be part of the title.

I imagine just modeling it on book, adding the tweak of a composer field, and we'd be in good shape... but more when I hear back from a librarian!

Thanks.

asallen - that sounds reasonable, thanks for the input - could you provide some examples of how various such works (I guess an opera, a lied, an orchestral score, and maybe an arranged piece would cover most usage cases) would would be cited in a style common in musicology?
edit: and please just use actual works (i.e. Schubert, Franz. Winterreise...) rather than abstractions (Composerlastname, Firstname. Lied) - much easier to understand an actual citation.

not going to happen in 2.1 and a good deal more complex, but it's something that's on the radar and will come eventually.

The point is that Zotero offers you numerous other ways to "classify" items - tags and collections most notably. The former will eventually include some version of a visual component.

Creating more and more item types that won't export to other citation managers and won't be reflected in what's possible to adjust in citation styles is, I believe (and, I gather, the developers believe), not a good idea.

The other feature request is a quite separate GUI request - sounds good to me, but I don't know how hard a more customizable GUI would be to write.

My librarian friend is not a cataloger, so she's getting in touch with someone who's got better details.

Here are a few examples from one the main journals in musicology, the Journal of the American Musicological Society:

Igor Stravinsky, _The Rite of Spring: Sketches 1911-13_, edited and with commentaries by Robert Craft (London: Faber and Faber, 1969).

Igor Stravinsky, _"Petrushka" and "The Rite of Spring" for Piano Four Hands or Two Pianos_ (Mineloa, N.Y.: Dover, 1990).

And here are a few examples from the bibliography of Susan Youens, _Retracing a Winter's Journey: Schubert's Winterreise_ (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991). All brackets and details are as printed in the book.

Schubert, Franz. [Autograph manuscript] "Winterreise von Wilh. Mueller." Part I. 21 folios. [Dated at the beginning] "Febr. 1827 Frz. Schubert mpia [manu propria]." In the Mary Flagler Cary Music Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City.

Schubert, Franz. [Engraver's fair copy] "Winterreise / von Wilh. Mueller / in Musik gesetzt / von / Franz Schubert / A[nn]o 1827." Part I. 32 folios. In the Vienna Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, Musiksammlung, MH 5391/c.

Schubert, Franz. _Neue Ausgabe saemtlicher Werke_. 4th ser.: Lieder. Vols. 4a and 4b, 242-5, 260-78. Ed. Walther Duerr. Kassel: Baerenreiter, 1979.

And I'll provide some more specifics when I get them. Thanks!

@ajlyon Thanks for your answer about the web-site and the other point as well. ^_^
Yeah, I basicly need 9 to 12 different types too, sometime a pain to organise... but as I always say... it's better than handwritten stuff or a list within a simple doc. So far, "research" been usefull to organise the type of docs... but yeah, if something else comes out, joy!