Zotero "sit on top of" any database?

naomibb

Hi,

I'm looking to confirm whether Zotero could "sit on top of" any database without having to export/import its records. The database in mind will be an open access citation database of all published scholarly journal literature (estimates of 44 000 scholarly journal publications/year).

I'm looking (albeit from a very limited technological understanding) at the potential for a reference management system like Zotero to facilitate the process of human metadata editing for such a project.

Although I've been reading the Zotero documentation and searching through the forums, I'm unclear whether this is possible. Direction as to appropriate terminology/discussion areas is also welcome.

Thanks!

bdarcus

I'm not exactly sure what you need, but it sounds like you want to store a whole bunch of journal article records and make them available on the web?

If yes, then I presume the source of much of that data is bulk records that would get imported?

If I have that right, then I'd imagine there wouldn't be a whole lot of "human metadata editing" and that such editing would only involve journal articles?

If I have everything right up to here, I doubt using Zotero is the best solution. It's designed to work with a local (sqlite) database, and then sync that with centralized accounts on a server.

ajlyon

It would not be easy to have Zotero do what you describe without using import and export. That said, I agree that Zotero provides a uniquely user-friendly way to curate metadata. If you build the online database to import and export, say, the RDF that Zotero can export, then you could have editors export portions of the database and modify them. It would also be fairly simple to build a Zotero plugin that made the process simpler-- for example, one that could send individual records from your database to the server in a format like RDF.