Upgrade StoragePDF management and alias
Hi,
I'm new to Zotero and just moved from Endnote (I regret every cent I paid for it, but that's another story). I've been reading many discussions in the forums and installed some plugins. It's been interesting so far.
I stumbled on a discussion about storing all the PDFs: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/34866/using-zotero-to-store-all-my-pdfs. The PDF reader inside Zotero is too good not to use it! But 10 years after I first set foot inside a university, I now have some 40 GB of PDF (as you can imagine, the folder structure is quite complex), and duplicating it inside the Zotero directory doesn't seem like a good idea. There's the "link" option, which is perfect for my (and others, I suppose) needs. The problem with that option is that the links must be manually set up for each entry. I've moved the Endnote library into Zotero; I've got about 900 references (which is far from the totality of the 40GB).
I hacked my non-programmer brain and thought I had come up with a solution: "What if I create an alias of those PDFs and import that into Zotero? It sure will work. Nope."
My question to the community is this: "Would it be a viable solution?" I've set up tags inside macOS ("articles", "books", "working papers"). I could pick up just the articles and batch-create aliases for them all - some of the articles have DOIs - then I could let Zotero import the aliases and move the original files freely in my complex folder structure. Since an alias is just a pointer to the original file, Zoter could read it like a path to the original file, maybe? That could work for it to access the DOI information and display the actual PDF in its PDF reader.
My wild dream even went as far as cooking up an "extension" to the original idea. I thought it would be possible to create a watch folder for Zotero, and whenever I've downloaded a new file, say about Adam Smith, and put it inside the "On Adam Smith" folder, I could create an alias and drop it inside the Zotero watch folder. By doing it, Zotero would produce the correct reference based on the DOI and know that the original file was stored somewhere outside its directory but could still access it.
It doesn't sound straightforward, but I can't think of other ways to create multiple links instead of duplicating the original files. If anyone has come up with a solution to this "problem", I'd love to hear about it.
I'm new to Zotero and just moved from Endnote (I regret every cent I paid for it, but that's another story). I've been reading many discussions in the forums and installed some plugins. It's been interesting so far.
I stumbled on a discussion about storing all the PDFs: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/34866/using-zotero-to-store-all-my-pdfs. The PDF reader inside Zotero is too good not to use it! But 10 years after I first set foot inside a university, I now have some 40 GB of PDF (as you can imagine, the folder structure is quite complex), and duplicating it inside the Zotero directory doesn't seem like a good idea. There's the "link" option, which is perfect for my (and others, I suppose) needs. The problem with that option is that the links must be manually set up for each entry. I've moved the Endnote library into Zotero; I've got about 900 references (which is far from the totality of the 40GB).
I hacked my non-programmer brain and thought I had come up with a solution: "What if I create an alias of those PDFs and import that into Zotero? It sure will work. Nope."
My question to the community is this: "Would it be a viable solution?" I've set up tags inside macOS ("articles", "books", "working papers"). I could pick up just the articles and batch-create aliases for them all - some of the articles have DOIs - then I could let Zotero import the aliases and move the original files freely in my complex folder structure. Since an alias is just a pointer to the original file, Zoter could read it like a path to the original file, maybe? That could work for it to access the DOI information and display the actual PDF in its PDF reader.
My wild dream even went as far as cooking up an "extension" to the original idea. I thought it would be possible to create a watch folder for Zotero, and whenever I've downloaded a new file, say about Adam Smith, and put it inside the "On Adam Smith" folder, I could create an alias and drop it inside the Zotero watch folder. By doing it, Zotero would produce the correct reference based on the DOI and know that the original file was stored somewhere outside its directory but could still access it.
It doesn't sound straightforward, but I can't think of other ways to create multiple links instead of duplicating the original files. If anyone has come up with a solution to this "problem", I'd love to hear about it.
1. When importing to Zotero, store the files in Zotero and delete them from their current location. That's very much what I'd recommend (it works more smoothly, allows.access to them via website and mobile app, etc.)
2. Alternatively, select the link file option during import. You don't have to do that manually -- I assume you are importing via RIS or Endnote XML: Zotero will provide that as an option.
I found out that I can add multiple PDFs as links. Unfortunately, I had already sent the question. Thanks for the quick answer!