Is Zoterobib embeddable?

emilyinayat

Hi everyone.

I'm a librarian at a university looking for ways to make our citation guides easier to use. I'm wondering if there's an official embed code out there for Zoterobib that we could put at the top of each of our style guides, similar to what Purdue OWL has done with Citation Machine at the top of each page of their guides (example here: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_style_introduction.html).

Or, alternatively since it's open-source, would it be possible to make one? Thanks in advance for any advice!

dstillman

We don't currently have any sort of embed code for ZoteroBib, but it's something we're considering.

Could you say more about what you had in mind? The Citation Machine widget on Purdue OWL just takes you to the ad-ridden CM site. We could pretty easily offer a similar widget with an input box that made it possible to quickly start a bibliography on ZoteroBib (which, needless to say, will not track students or spam them with ads).

emilyinayat

I think what you propose is pretty much what I was picturing, the Zoterobib box where you enter a DOI/ISBN/etc., but just on one of our Library guides.

I guess in my ideal world they'd be able to do everything right there on that page, create the citation/bib and all, but I would definitely understand if that wasn't possible. We definitely just find that students hate being sent to a second location.

What would be REALLY cool is if we could have an entry box with a citation style already chosen, so that if they were looking at our APA guide we could have an APA Zoterobib widget, or if they're looking at the MLA guide, it would do MLA... for reference, here's what our citation guides already look like: https://librarybestbets.fairfield.edu/citationguides

The problem with maintaining super-detailed guides like this is that they're completely awful to update when the style itself is updated, so I'm thinking that if we could have a Zoterobib widget, that might help us to cut down a little on the more obscure formats and instead be able to just maintain the basics (or maybe cut down on the basics and instead provide guidance on the more obscure?). We're also trying really hard not to link to Purdue OWL, given the aforementioned relationship to Citation Machine/Chegg. So basically, if you decide to make a Zoterobib widget, I'll be incredibly happy!

angus__sinclair

Hello - I'd like to chime in and say we'd love to be able to embed ZoteroBib in our online referencing tutorial we're developing for students. At the moment it looks like this: https://ibb.co/h9PNwyp Lots of our students find referencing overwhelming and ZoteroBib is a huge relief when they use it. The ability to embed the page or use a widget version in our tutorial would be fantastic.

emilyinayat

Was just wondering if there are now any plans to make this dream a reality, since you were thinking about it when I originally posted all those months ago? We just surveyed our students about our citation guides and, unsurprisingly, a huge number of them asked us to add a citation generator right on the guides. Would love to get them using ZoteroBib since y'all are so dedicated to their privacy and security!