archival documents, bibliography, ibid

zachbe

As a historian I use archival documents, each of which is footnoted rarely more than once, and none of which should be in the bibliography. The bibliography and footnotes do a great job so far of keeping track of my published sources, but I don't know how to deal with archival ones.

Is there a way to both to allow the ibid system to keep track of them and have them not be in the automatic bibliography? Can I make Zotero entries that are disabled from being in the automatic bibliography?

I use Chicago/Turabian footnote with bibliography.

erazlogo

Is there a way to both to allow the ibid system to keep track of them and have them not be in the automatic bibliography? Can I make Zotero entries that are disabled from being in the automatic bibliography?

Not currently, but there is a ticket for this, so theoretically it's possible--see the discussion on the ticket on how this could be done.

The current workaround if you use the citation tool would be to use automatic footnotes for both primary and secondary sources, but to generate bibliography separately from a Zotero collection or saved search.

adamsmith

at least not easily.
It might be possible to adjust a style - if all of the items of one type (e.g. "letter" or "manuscript") fall into this category one could define the bibliography output for that type as empty. That would probably still produce an empty line, but that's easy enough to fix in the end.

As a workaround/alternative, you can, of course, mix regular Word/Ooo footnotes with Zotero created ones and just insert the sources and ibids. for archival sources manually.

fbennett

There is a mechanism in citeproc-js for selective bibliography output. If implemented on Zotero-side, this will allow sectioned bibliographies, and the suppression of selected material, which might cover this use case, depending on the conditions -- it works from the fields and tags present on the entry in the database, but doesn't know about locators attached to entries in the text. The facility is otherwise pretty flexible, and documented in the processor manual.

zachbe

Thanks for all the suggestions:

erazlogo: The ticket seems backward. I'm looking to have info in the footnote, but not have any listing in the bibliography. The bibliography for archival sources just lists the archives, not the files or boxes. File and box numbers only go in the footnotes.

adamsmith: I've tried that workaround, and I'm happy to enter the data manually, but then zotero thinks it's a comment and the ibids get screwed up. If the source before and after an archival source are the same published source, it'll list an ibid where there shouldn't be one. I need a way to make it clear to zotero that I'm manually putting in footnote information, though I'm not giving the information to zotero.

fbennett: Sounds provocative, but beyond my programming ken. A sectioned bibliography is what I need, and I imagine many others, but I need it spelled out more clearly.

fbennett

Sorry, I only meant the ref as an assurance that the facility actually exists in the processor itself; it's not available in Zotero yet. To tap into it, there would need to be some sort of easy-to-grasp user interface in Zotero, which would supply the data to the processor that you see there. It will be awhile before it surfaces.

erazlogo

There is a mechanism in citeproc-js for selective bibliography output. If implemented on Zotero-side, this will allow sectioned bibliographies, and the suppression of selected material, which might cover this use case, depending on the conditions -- it works from the fields and tags present on the entry in the database, but doesn't know about locators attached to entries in the text.

This is great, thanks! Sectioned bibliographies work from item type, right? Then the option of including a list of archival collections would be possible with hierarchical item types (I hope). The ticket I listed above may be obsolete then.

fbennett

@erazlogo, Yep, any keyed string data on the zotero item, so type and simple fields would all work. It doesn't handle dates yet, but if there's demand that could be done.

zachbe

If I add all the archival info in a prefix or suffix of a blank zotero listing, I also get ibids any time I use that blank listing twice in a row, for different manual listings.

Is there a way to disable ibid action on a particular zotero reference? If I could tell zotero that my one master blank item was for manual references, my problems would all be solved. I could add my pertinent info in prefix or suffix, and zotero would know not to either continue ibids through it, or use ibids if I use it twice in a row.