Categories of documents

Nimrod

First, congratulations by this program!
I'm sorry if this feature has already been requested, but I didn't found it so far.
My request is related with a problem that I have which is how to differentiate articles, or whatever documents, that I own, that i still have to read, or even that I found the reference and that I still have to search, etc.

Thanks!

dstillman

I don't think such a use case would merit a new feature—it seems what you want could be accomplished with existing tags functionality. You could have, for example, a tag for "Unread" and then quickly find the items in a collection that you hadn't read by using the tag selector. You could also create a saved search for items with that tag and view them that way—once you had read the document, you could simply remove the tag, and the item would drop off the list.

Andrew Moylan

Yeah I agree Zotero is already very well equipped to handle this sort of thing, whether by tags, saved searches, and/or subcollections. As you suggest Dan, I use tags like "unread" and "to read".

On a related note: Dan, what are your thoughts on the partial overlap between subcollections and tags? Presently, an item can be in any number (including zero) subcollections and can have any number of (including zero) tags. As far as I know, the only functional difference between subcollections and tags is that, on the one hand, subcollections can be organised heirarchically whereas tags cannot; and on the other hand, the contents of multiple tags can be viewed at once whereas only one subcollection can be open at once.

Some modern software, most notably gmail, does away with folders altogether, using only labels for grouping items.

If tags (as implemented in Zotero) were supplemented with an heirarchical structure (so that e.g. tag "numerical quadrature technique" implies tag "numerical analysis"), I think tags would dominate subcollections in usefulness, and subcollections could be done away with altogether, for a much simpler interface. Of course it might be too late for this sort of change, though Zotero is still in Beta. What do you think?

Nimrod

Thnak you for your reply. I just have been using Zotero since last week so I'm not yet an expert on it. I didn't think about using tags to do what I wanted and actually it would work. However it does seems kind of more complicate than what I have though.
My initial idea (maybe i wasn't too explicit) was, for example, whenever you open a folder and you see the list of documents, instead of seeing each one of them with white background, i could set it up to see, let's say, papers which i own in white background, papers which i have the reference but i dont have in light orange, urgent papers to read in red, etc.
It is just that with the tags I have to treat them, make them, search for them and if they were "offered" visually it seems way more simplier.
I have slight dislexia and at least to me sometimes it seems more easier to deal with colour categories rather than pure text.

I would like to see more people to comment, if possible.

groovebot

Reviving an old thread, but I'd like to signal my agreement with Nimrod. I was looking for an ergonomic way to highlight "to-read", "to-find", or "high priority" documents as well.

I think the advantage of a dedicated feature (by coloured highlighting or an icon in the document list) as opposed to using tags is that you would e.g. be browsing a collection and quickly notice items which still needs work. If you could set levels of priority (say 1-4), an intenser background colour for higher priority would be a very visual aid for workflow. I think the solution with tags is less intuitive and makes no distinction between properties of a document related to content ("glucose" tag) versus related to workflow ("medium priority" tag).

If implemented not by coloured highlighting but as an optional extra column in the item list window, perhaps the extra programming required could be relatively minimal?

I would assume a few such markers ("read!", "find!", priority levels) can be of interest to many users. For more user-specific markers the regular tags system could be used as Dan suggested.

fionaw

I agree with Nimrod, this kind of feature is exactly what I hace been looking for. Being able to colour code, 'read', 'to read', etc would be perfect. Perhaps there would be a pop-up box every time you save something in zotero asking which category it shold go into, and users could set their own kinds and number of categories. I don't knwo ho feasible this is but would be much appreciated. Tags are good but as has been said not visible enough and requires input that makes it inconvenient and unlikely I would be disciplined enough to add a tag every time I save a reference.

jesusnavarro

One point more for Nimrod: I think the colours feature would be extremely useful. Please do think about adding it in the next version!

Arjan

I'm also looking for a way to manage this sort of information. I thought of using tags as well, but for now it seems too much work to label everything, and without an intuitive enough way to asses an item's status.

Color-coding seems a nice way to represent such information. One thing I would also want to be able to define, is whether I own a hard copy of a book/article, an ebook/attachment, or if it's only a reference. And also the reference's work-flow status (such as those discussed above).

What different methods are people currently using to do this in Zotero? And is a more specific feature likely to make it into Zotero?

adamsmith

color coded tags are planned - though probably not super high up the list.
I'm not sure why you think tags aren't a good way to achieve these goals in general.
You are aware, that you can assign a tag to multiple items by dragging the items onto the tag in the left(!) panel?