Viewing Notes without Sources

dpgetman

The main thing standing between me (with other Scribe users) and Zotero is the ability to view (not just produce reports, in the actual Zotero interface) my notes in alphabetical, numerical, chronological order without having them grouped by parent or source.

This seems like both a crucial feature for any note taking software, as the forums I have participated in for both Scribe and Zotero have shown. It also seems like a feature that could be somewhat painlessly integrated (wishful thinking? The advanced search suggests that it has this capability with a check box, but alas, does no such thing)

dpgetman

I have noticed this addition to the new versions of Zotero

"Output full content of notes in bibliography-mode Quick Copy if only copying notes; otherwise, exclude notes from generated bibliography"

Does this solve the problem presented in this forum? Meaning, does this additional function enable us to generate alphabetical/chronological reports of notes (children) without having them automatically (and unavoidably) sorted under source (parent) groupings?

If it does, where would I find instructions on how to use this function?

dstillman

does this additional function enable us to generate alphabetical/chronological reports of notes (children) without having them automatically (and unavoidably) sorted under source (parent) groupings?

It's been possible to display child notes on their own in reports for a while via a hidden pref, but sorting has been buggy. The changelog line you quote isn't related to this, but the various "Report Sorting" bugs listed as fixed under 1.0.5 should help.

If it does, where would I find instructions on how to use this function?

http://www.zotero.org/documentation/reports

Look for "combineChildItems" on that page.

It's not currently possible to display notes separated from their parents in the Zotero interface itself.

dpgetman

Thanks Dan. I'm eager to switch to Zotero, but have to wait until the interface can display notes on their own with reasonable sorting capabilities as well as generate reports of the same nature. Am I correct in thinking there is a ticket pending for that function?

dstillman

Am I correct in thinking there is a ticket pending for that function?

Yes.

erazlogo

Tickets to hide non-matching items and to only include child items of matching items in advanced search also seem relevant to this request.

dpgetman

Looking at the most recent update for Zotero, it does not seem that the ability to view notes matching search or tag criteria in Zotero without having to produce a report (the subject of this thread) has been included. Is this correct, are we still unable to view merely the notes relating to the search criteria without having to also view their sources and sibling notes as well?

dstillman

"Hide non-matching items" has not yet been implemented, but, as you probably know, the behavior of Select All has been changed to address your other, related request.

dpgetman

"Hide non-matching items" has not yet been implemented, but, as you probably know, the behavior of Select All has been changed to address your other, related request.

Thanks Dan, Perhaps you can offer me an alternative method for approaching the problem the absence of this feature creates.

At the moment I have a few thousand notes from a few hundred sources. I have titled every note with a date, 1915 01 01, for example, followed by a descriptor. At this stage in my research it is necessary that I move through my notes one by one and in chronological order to add appropriate tags so that they can then be grouped thematically.

If I could somehow view only my notes sorted by title without being grouped under their parent items (an impossibility I understand), I would be able to move through the chronologically ordered list and simply drag and drop them into tag bundles with ease.

It seems my only other option is to generate a report with my notes in order by their titles (chronological) and then search out and manually change the tags of each one in Zotero, flipping back and forth between the report and Zotero and searching out each note each time.

As you can see, the report option would take an incredible amount of time comparatively. Any ideas on how to get around this? Thanks David

toussaint

I am so grateful to dpgetman for putting this issue so well. I am in the same boat. I now have thousands of sources referenced, most with a single note attached. I've tagged them and sorted them into countless categories and sub categories, yet it still requires remembering what I've found or sorting through often source titles rather than content.

When you can sort through notes like old-fashioned notecards or Scribe, irrespective of their sources (for which naturally one needs an indication to be able to pull it when necessary), it's not only much easier to find what you're looking for, but things you'd forgotten spring up. Things that didn't seem important before take on new meaning. Despite all the fabulous features offered by Zotero-and fabuous they are- after months of using it, I'm finding that information is bogging down rather than springing up. We mustn't forget that in any paper or book, content comes first, the bibliography follows.

I'm glad to know there's a ticket to address this issue for those of us who feel this way. I just wanted to add another voice to the ranks that are in the same state of hopeful expectation. Thanks for all your great work. Letitia

mark

I, too, want to add another voice to this. We can already bring some organization to our notes using tags, but displaying notes without their parents intervening all the time would just be very helpful.

erazlogo

It seems my only other option is to generate a report with my notes in order by their titles (chronological) and then search out and manually change the tags of each one in Zotero, flipping back and forth between the report and Zotero and searching out each note each time.

The only way to speed this up a little would be to do a saved search on "item type" [is] "note," then generate a report sorted by note title--at least then you'll get all notes sorted in chronological order. Then print out a report, go through it adding tags in writing, then search and add tags to each note manually.

This will indeed be much faster when Zotero can display notes without their parents.

dpgetman

erazlogo,
Indeed it would, considering the age of this forum and the ticket meant to address this feature, could you comment on the priority level of such an addition?

I understand, of course, that promising ETA on these kind of things is probably discouraged. However, considering that we have professionals trying to decide whether or not to switch to alternative software, might you offer us an opinion as to whether we should stick it out a bit longer or move on if this feature is simply too essential to do without at present?

Thanks again for your attentiveness to our inquiries and demands. David

erazlogo

dan can answer the priority question better than i can--a lot of other things need to be done as well. thank you for your patience, elena

dpgetman

I assume you mean Dan Stillman. Anything to add Dan?

dpgetman

Dan Stillman and erazlogo, at the risk of being redundant, could I ask once again:

"Considering the age of this forum and the ticket meant to address this feature, could you comment on the priority level of such an addition?

I understand, of course, that promising ETA on these kind of things is probably discouraged. However, considering that we have professionals trying to decide whether or not to switch to alternative software, might you offer us an opinion as to whether we should stick it out a bit longer or move on if this feature is simply too essential to do without at present?

Thanks again for your attentiveness to our inquiries and demands. David"

Keith Ralston

This product must have additional note functionality to fulfill its claim of being a complete research tool. In their current form, notes are useless. I am looking at ndxCards, but do not want to use them.

adamsmith

honestly I don't think Zotero will be able to compete with powerful note-taking software in any foreseeable future. It's before all a bibliographic management program and I think that's where developers have (imho rightly) put most of their work - and there is still some important work left to do. If you rely heavily on the capacity to organize and customize notes in a variety of ways, you'll probably want to look for something else in addition to Zotero.

Obviously, though, notes as currently available aren't useless per se, they are just useless to you. If you look around here, there are a large amount of features that people find "dealbreakers", "absolutely essential" etc. there is no way they are all going to happen soon.

Keith Ralston

The market is overrun with bib management tools. That is not the problem. The problem is the integration of said bib management with research organization. No one does that well. If this is just going to be a free version of EndNote, then what's the point?

I became excited about this software and began promoting it, because I bought into the vision of a research tool being written by people who do research. Research is more than just bib management.

If note taking is not going to be given any priority, then get creative and integrate with a good tool. Better yet, declare note taking dead and challenge someone else to take up the gauntlet of integrating a note system with this one. This however, makes little sense coming the group that at one time had Scribe on the market.

ajlyon

Remember that Zotero needs more dedicated developers in order to move through the long list of very important improvements with any speed. There is probably room for a Scribe replacement that does things like advanced notes management, person cards, and place cards-- and that replacement could easily be a Zotero plugin. If the historians and humanists out there want to make this happen, then the best way is to secure funding and programmers to do it. It only takes a few dozen Endnote licenses to pay for a fair amount of development. (I'd start writing one myself, but, like many others, I have a Ph.D. to finish.)

adamsmith

once again - not everyone uses notes as you do. Not everyone who does research needs the type of note taking features you need. For many of us, the current note taking feature does what we want exactly. So Zotero doesn't do everything you need for your research. Afaik it also doesn't help natural scientists plan their labs and experiments, nor does it help me to manage and analyze data.

If this is just going to be a free version of EndNote, then what's the point?

how to count the ways: It is better for gathering information in a modern data environment, it has better collaboration and sharing features, it has a more modern, less clumsy user interface, it is open source and allows for user-written extensions, it has a more powerful citation style language, and it is already saving institutions and individuals thousands of dollars (a Endnote campus license for a US University is around US$ 10.000, invidual users start at $200 for a student edition).
And I haven't even talked about it's potential impact in poorer countries.

and was aljyon says about plugin development.

erazlogo

I'm not in a hurry to see it happen today, but I hope Zotero will implement the tickets linked from this thread eventually.

This is not a matter of bibliographic management vs. notetaking--Zotero is already more than a bibliographic management tool, and it's notetaking features are quire robust. It's a matter of closing tickets required for humanities work. There are quite a few tickets on humanities styles requirements that are also being postponed while other tickets are being filled (for example, dedicated field for archives, address for letters, original publication date, and formatting of film references). Rigorous humanities research requires these, as it does the few notetaking features requested here.

The argument that "not everyone needs this" is not exactly valid in this case--obviously not all Zotero users are historians or film scholars, but developers added plenty of features for legal scholars lately and not every Zotero user is a legal scholar either.

adamsmith

Elena - the new features for legal scholars, though, just underscore ajlyon's point - the principal reason so much has been done for legal scholarship is that Frank Bennett - a legal scholar - has volunteered what must by now be hundreds of hours of his time and his considerable skill to advance these things. I'm sure no one would complain if a historian or literary scholar were to put in a comparable effort to develop an advanced note-taking feature for integration with Zotero.

My point concerning "not everyone needs this" is not that it shouldn't been done (I think it should, though we may have different opinions on the level of priority), but that comments such as current notes being "useless" or "should be declared dead" are misplaced and unnecessarily negative and antagonizing.

erazlogo

Adam--

Frank Bennett - a legal scholar - has volunteered what must by now be hundreds of hours of his time and his considerable skill to advance these things. I'm sure no one would complain if a historian or literary scholar were to put in a comparable effort to develop an advanced note-taking feature for integration with Zotero.

Several features for humanities scholars in Zotero were added because I worked on them (Chicago styles for example), putting in quite a few hours over the years.

@Dan S.: I understand that notetaking stuff is not a priority, but would it be possible to close the archives ticket? I can add the field myself I think, but then the data needs to be moved afterwards.

adamsmith

I'm well aware of your terrific work on the Chicago styles - which imho is just another case in point, though: Desirable features for Zotero, especially as they primarily benefit a specific user group, are much more likely to come around if someone from that user group makes a concerted effort.

fbennett

The note review features discussed here would be great to have. Re the field issues, we should definitely work on that list. It's a separate topic, I'll start another thread.

fbennett

Elena, adamsmith: both of your contributions have been, and continue to be, immense. (Three-way back-pat circuit duly closed, parity restored, all systems normal. :)

adamsmith

thanks Frank and sorry Elena if I came across as contentious - that was not intended and most certainly not directed at you.
Like all of us I do want Zotero to be as useful as possible to as many people as possible and you definitely are among the people who make that happen.

erazlogo

Desirable features for Zotero, especially as they primarily benefit a specific user group, are much more likely to come around if someone from that user group makes a concerted effort.

Right. That would of course be best.

bedelay

I love zotero, feel tremendous gratitude to all who have made it possible and continue to make it better, and enthusiastically recommend it to colleagues and students. I'm an historian. I switched from Endnote and Filemaker Pro a couple of years ago and am finally moving on from the bibliography-building phase to intensive research on a new book project. I'd hoped this whole time that I'd be able to use Zotero as an alternative both for Endnote AND for FMP (for my note-management). Having read this thread I'm ready to abandon hope that the notes side of this application will work for me. Like others who have posted above, I need to be able to step back from thousands of notes at the end of the process and sort them into various ways based on fields (date, location, keyword, etc), without having them tied to parents. Given that a few folks have already asked the developers for an ETA on developing improved note-management capabilities and have not been answered, I'm figuring it's time to look elsewhere. I'd be grateful to hear from others struggling with this issue about what alternative programs they are considering. Is anyone aware of good discussions online about the virtues and limitations of other programs in this regard (I have an ancient version of FMP, and am open to alternatives)? And I'd *really* love to make this work on Zotero and would be willing to wait if I had confidence that a fix was looming in the near term...Another user asking humbly for an ETA on a fix. Again, thanks for the wonderful program.

noellenski

I would second Brian's comments and question about ETA for fixes. I too am a historian and would love to use Zotero for note-taking but hesitate because: 1) the search feature cannot separate relevant child notes out from non-relevant child notes and parent data, and 2) once searches are completed, they cannot be EASILY reorganized according to new criteria (e.g. date) or restructured into outlines. I don't have the programming skills to solve either problem or I would gladly work on it. The second problem is surely more complicated, but it seems to me it would help if: 1) child notes had tabs not just for "tags" and "related" but also for "sorting criteria" which one could use to sort alphanumerically within this field once a search is complete (by date, concept, whatever one chose to enter there) and 2) there were an outline window in which one could create an outline and into which one could drag and drop child notes. But just solving the first problem would be a huge step forward. Again, any ETA on when that ticket might be filled?