Upgrade StorageZotFile and other solutions for linking attachments: Bottom line
tldr; After trying many things over the years I have found saving by hand and including a simple link (eg via 'Attach link to file') the most robust ('do and forget') way in Zotero for keeping track of self-stored attachments and I would encourage anybody contemplating more elegant ways of going about it to carefully reflect on their long-term requirements before locking their workflow into anything that might be here today but gone in ten years' time.
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.
Long read:
In case it is of interest to anybody looking into how to move on from ZotFile or more generally how to manage attachments with Zotero, here's what I have gone back to now.
My 'back to basics' approach:
I save the attachment with a timestamped (by hand) filename into a 'Zotero attachments' folder in my personal cloud, and then create a Zotero entry in which I use 'Attach link to file' to associate the record with the file.
The timestamp ("YYMMDD MMSS") gives me a quick unique filename across all files saved in that way but I tend to follow that with a bit of context, at the minimum Author-Year. Nothing that takes longer than a few seconds to type though.
Benefit:
Long-term insulates workflow from impact of software upgrades, changes in extensions ecosystem and many other external changes that otherwise would require time-intensive user intervention to find back to a stable setup thing else that requires lots of time to ensure.
Cost:
A repetitive sequence of manual steps for each item, but only takes marginally longer than the previous process via ZotFile.
Question to ask yourself:
Do I *really* need anything more involved/elegant than that? Will I always have the time to upgrade my workflow when things (software etc) change? Will I remember further down the line what today looks obvious to me in terms of where and how I store things?
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.
Motivation:
I have used Zotero from when it first became available as a Firefox extension 20(?) years ago, at that time migrating data and attachments going back to when I started managing my bibliographies and curating my archives electronically in the late 1980s.
The one constant over all these years has been that there hardly is a constant to count on: photocopies wilt away, PDF files saved in the very early Adobe formats can become inaccessible, as can proprietary scanner img files. Open standards too can change, not always in backward compatible ways. Storage technologies change, as do cloud solutions. Even when solutions work well and stable, their pricing models might alter and move them beyond your envelope.
Software comes and goes, that's the way it is. For Zotero, we now have about as much stability as it is humanly possibly to put in place institutionally, which is amazing and a testament to the vision and pure grit of everybody involved. Zotero will be around for a very long time to come.
But the active workspan of an academic, researcher, author etc is easily in the region of 50 years and more. Who knows how many exciting new ways of storing and managing attachments will come and go over the next 20 years of Zotero? For the short term, all that is good and well. Many Zotero users don't have reason to expect using it for more than a few years, and we are very lucky to have a dynamic extensions ecology catering for anybody better served by workflows not immediately available in the core software.
Reflecting on my own use of reference managers of all those years, my overall message though is this: keep things as simple as possible, with very defensive reliance on additional software features. It will go a long way towards being able to bypass much of the noise when focussing on your actual mission.
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.
Long read:
In case it is of interest to anybody looking into how to move on from ZotFile or more generally how to manage attachments with Zotero, here's what I have gone back to now.
My 'back to basics' approach:
I save the attachment with a timestamped (by hand) filename into a 'Zotero attachments' folder in my personal cloud, and then create a Zotero entry in which I use 'Attach link to file' to associate the record with the file.
The timestamp ("YYMMDD MMSS") gives me a quick unique filename across all files saved in that way but I tend to follow that with a bit of context, at the minimum Author-Year. Nothing that takes longer than a few seconds to type though.
Benefit:
Long-term insulates workflow from impact of software upgrades, changes in extensions ecosystem and many other external changes that otherwise would require time-intensive user intervention to find back to a stable setup thing else that requires lots of time to ensure.
Cost:
A repetitive sequence of manual steps for each item, but only takes marginally longer than the previous process via ZotFile.
Question to ask yourself:
Do I *really* need anything more involved/elegant than that? Will I always have the time to upgrade my workflow when things (software etc) change? Will I remember further down the line what today looks obvious to me in terms of where and how I store things?
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.
Motivation:
I have used Zotero from when it first became available as a Firefox extension 20(?) years ago, at that time migrating data and attachments going back to when I started managing my bibliographies and curating my archives electronically in the late 1980s.
The one constant over all these years has been that there hardly is a constant to count on: photocopies wilt away, PDF files saved in the very early Adobe formats can become inaccessible, as can proprietary scanner img files. Open standards too can change, not always in backward compatible ways. Storage technologies change, as do cloud solutions. Even when solutions work well and stable, their pricing models might alter and move them beyond your envelope.
Software comes and goes, that's the way it is. For Zotero, we now have about as much stability as it is humanly possibly to put in place institutionally, which is amazing and a testament to the vision and pure grit of everybody involved. Zotero will be around for a very long time to come.
But the active workspan of an academic, researcher, author etc is easily in the region of 50 years and more. Who knows how many exciting new ways of storing and managing attachments will come and go over the next 20 years of Zotero? For the short term, all that is good and well. Many Zotero users don't have reason to expect using it for more than a few years, and we are very lucky to have a dynamic extensions ecology catering for anybody better served by workflows not immediately available in the core software.
Reflecting on my own use of reference managers of all those years, my overall message though is this: keep things as simple as possible, with very defensive reliance on additional software features. It will go a long way towards being able to bypass much of the noise when focussing on your actual mission.