Upgrade StorageZotero Noob, please help
Hi,
I am very new to Zotero, and I'm learning on the fly. I started using bibliographic software with RefWorks and EndNote, so this is quite the learning curve. I imported all of my bibliographic information for a prospectus, but many of the sources I did not use, so I created a separate collection for my bibliographic information. I have the information stored in a file on my external hard drive and I have several questions:
1) Is there a way to identify the sources I used for my bibliography and weed them out from the rest of my database?
2) When I import my sources, they are in a file; on my external hard drive, they are downloaded into Zotero as a file from Worldcat, so each source was a file, and the citation information was within that file. I thought it would be "cleaner" (it was very late, and I was very tired) to place all of my citations in a subject file (My Library>Dissertation>Sites>Kourion), and then I selected "delete collection" for the file. Originally within the "Kourion" subfile, there were many smaller files that contained the bibliographic entries, and I could edit each one.
I thought all was well and good, neat and tidy, until this morning when I tried to edit some citations within Zotero. Now I cannot edit a single one, even the ones where I did not delete the collection.
Is this a user error?
Does my software need to be repaired?
Does Zotero read from the original file, and when my external hard drive was disconnected, was the data also disconnected from the file?
Do I have an incorrect understanding of the underlying principles of how Zotero functions?
Thanks for your patience and help with a rookie,
R. Ross
I am very new to Zotero, and I'm learning on the fly. I started using bibliographic software with RefWorks and EndNote, so this is quite the learning curve. I imported all of my bibliographic information for a prospectus, but many of the sources I did not use, so I created a separate collection for my bibliographic information. I have the information stored in a file on my external hard drive and I have several questions:
1) Is there a way to identify the sources I used for my bibliography and weed them out from the rest of my database?
2) When I import my sources, they are in a file; on my external hard drive, they are downloaded into Zotero as a file from Worldcat, so each source was a file, and the citation information was within that file. I thought it would be "cleaner" (it was very late, and I was very tired) to place all of my citations in a subject file (My Library>Dissertation>Sites>Kourion), and then I selected "delete collection" for the file. Originally within the "Kourion" subfile, there were many smaller files that contained the bibliographic entries, and I could edit each one.
I thought all was well and good, neat and tidy, until this morning when I tried to edit some citations within Zotero. Now I cannot edit a single one, even the ones where I did not delete the collection.
Is this a user error?
Does my software need to be repaired?
Does Zotero read from the original file, and when my external hard drive was disconnected, was the data also disconnected from the file?
Do I have an incorrect understanding of the underlying principles of how Zotero functions?
Thanks for your patience and help with a rookie,
R. Ross
2. Sorry, it's not clear to me what you did _or_ what you're asking. Which collection did you delete? What do you mean by "I cannot edit a single citation" -- edit where? What does "I cannot" mean specifically in this context? No, once imported, ZOtero doesn't care about the RIS(?) files you used to import items. Generally speaking, though, don't use RIS when getting data from websites like Worldcat. There's a better way: https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero#via_your_web_browser
2. I don't know exactly what I did, but it works now; I used the IT Guys solution. I think it was a user error.
I was asking many things, probably too much.
The "I cannot edit a single citation" is the third column on the right, Edit Column (?), and it remained blank when I clicked on individual citations in the middle column. So if I needed to change the author, I couldn't because nothing was there.
I used RIS as the file type. Thanks for the information about RIS. I'll try that going forward.