Shortening or omitting lenghty URLs in endnotes

doyledh
I'm using the New York Times archives in several endnotes and the URLs are unusually long and messy for publication.
Is there a way to suppress those from going into the citation, but also to keep the URL for my later referral?
  • adamsmith
    depends on the citation style - it's certainly possible to have a citation style that doesn't print URLs, or only prints them for website item types (I'm sure there are some of those).
    Also, the URL should also be saved with the snapshot attached to the item so you could delete it.
    Finally, what's a sample URL - we might be able to trim it on import.
  • bdarcus
    Yeah, I think this is up to the translators to handle; trimming off unnecessary parameter options, for example (relevant to the NYT, but not a lot of others sites, that use parameters for navigation).
  • doyledh
    The NYT is saved as a "newspaper article"
    I understand how to edit the citation by hand. I would welcome a way to trim them all down. I see what you mean by having the link in the snapshot.

    Here is a sample citation:

    “The Conservative Leaders on the War.,” The New York Times, November 17, 1861, sec. Archive, http://www.nytimes.com/1861/11/17/news/the-conservative-leaders-on-the-war.html?scp=2&sq=earl+of+shrewsbury&st=p.
  • adamsmith
    yes, we should be able to trim everything after .html for NYT URLs, I'll have a look, but obviously that will no help you with the ones you already have.

    You can't trim them as part of the citation style. What is possible is to code a citation style (or use an existing one) that doesn't print URLs for anything except web pages - APA and MLA would be examples I believe.
  • bdarcus
    edited January 20, 2012
    You can't trim them as part of the citation style. What is possible is to code a citation style (or use an existing one) that doesn't print URLs for anything except web pages ...
    Yes, but for the record, that's not a very good general solution, considering how much of contemporary news articles, radio fragments, reports, and so forth that we tend to access online these days.

    For @doyledh, I would just manually edit those records per @adamsmith's suggestion (in your example, remove all content after the "?").
  • adamsmith
    Bruce - the rational for MLA (e.g.) not to print URLs is not that those article's aren't online (in MLA they'll actually be marked specifically as online), it's that you can just google/otherwisesearch the title and find the article.
  • bdarcus
    ... the rational for MLA (e.g.) not to print URLs is not that those article's aren't online (in MLA they'll actually be marked specifically as online), it's that you can just google/otherwisesearch the title and find the article.
    Isn't this true of anything not behind a paywall? Seems kind of arbitrary.

    In any case, my point was to suggest the OP fix the data in their records to be how they want them.
  • adamsmith
    Fixing the NYT URLs will take some more scrutiny. For all "modern" URLs the part after the question mark is unnecessary, but some of the archive uses it for article identification.
  • adamsmith
    This is now fixed in the NYT translator. The translator will auto-update in the next 24hs or you can manually update from the general tab of the Zotero preferences.
    Obviously this will trim URLs only for articles you download starting now, not retroactively.
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