Upgrade StorageFeature request: Retrieve Metadata by Identifier
Hi Zotero forums! I would like to request a feature. I would like it if the right-click menu on indexed/unindexed items had a "Retrieve Metadata by Identifier" option, that would function as the Magic Wand but for an existing item (either a full item or a raw attachment).
I very very frequently have PDFs which Zotero's automatic metadata retrieval either cannot pick any metadata up out of, or cannot pick a DOI up out of and so retrieves incomplete / inaccurate metadata. The process for fixing this is painful. What I've usually done is pull the attachment(s) out of their entry, right-click Create Parent Item from the "main" attachment, enter the DOI, find and move back any additional attachments. This sucks for something I do very frequently!
I recently complained about this to a friend, who mentioned a less painful way -- retrieving a new entry from the DOI via the Magic Wand, and then merging the two and keeping the new entry's metadata. This works slightly better! But it is still painful (lots of steps, have to make sure to only Magic Wand in the correct folder, etc), and further -- that I needed to be told how to do this means that as a pattern it is largely undiscoverable. I think for that reason (but mostly for the reason that I do this pattern with 2/3 of my PDFs) there should be dedicated support for updating the metadata of an entry.
Anyway, I'm suggesting this here as it looks like here is the place for such suggestions? But if I've posted to the wrong sub-forum by mistake please feel free to directly move my post. I think on the implementation side this wouldn't be too hard. The building blocks already exist in the form of Magic Wand and Create Parent Item (I would suggest that "Create Parent Item" for bare attachments get replaced with "Retrieve Metadata by Identifier" for consistency.)
Please let me know what you think about this. I am not fluent in JavaScript nor the Zotero codebase and don't currently have the time to change that to be a help there, but I can give feedback design-wise if useful.
I very very frequently have PDFs which Zotero's automatic metadata retrieval either cannot pick any metadata up out of, or cannot pick a DOI up out of and so retrieves incomplete / inaccurate metadata. The process for fixing this is painful. What I've usually done is pull the attachment(s) out of their entry, right-click Create Parent Item from the "main" attachment, enter the DOI, find and move back any additional attachments. This sucks for something I do very frequently!
I recently complained about this to a friend, who mentioned a less painful way -- retrieving a new entry from the DOI via the Magic Wand, and then merging the two and keeping the new entry's metadata. This works slightly better! But it is still painful (lots of steps, have to make sure to only Magic Wand in the correct folder, etc), and further -- that I needed to be told how to do this means that as a pattern it is largely undiscoverable. I think for that reason (but mostly for the reason that I do this pattern with 2/3 of my PDFs) there should be dedicated support for updating the metadata of an entry.
Anyway, I'm suggesting this here as it looks like here is the place for such suggestions? But if I've posted to the wrong sub-forum by mistake please feel free to directly move my post. I think on the implementation side this wouldn't be too hard. The building blocks already exist in the form of Magic Wand and Create Parent Item (I would suggest that "Create Parent Item" for bare attachments get replaced with "Retrieve Metadata by Identifier" for consistency.)
Please let me know what you think about this. I am not fluent in JavaScript nor the Zotero codebase and don't currently have the time to change that to be a help there, but I can give feedback design-wise if useful.
Ah, I suppose this isn't a problem, yeah. In practice I'm always in the same folder as the item I want to merge.