I couldn't agree more to what mgrowhoski wrote. The "several library feature" is required. Otherwise it would be very inconvenient to use Zotero. I need several libraries in different locations. Preferably in a format that makes it easy to synchronise it with SVN or something similar to be independent from the Zotero server. I'd like to convince my colleagues to use Zotero for a new project. There won't be a way to make them use different FF profiles to switch between libraries. That's just not going to happen. It simply doesn't make sense. So please, make it possible to use different paths with different libraries.
I see there has been no discussion on this topic recently.
Has there been a breakthrough to make multiple libraries possible in Zotero? I'd really like it.
I'm probably a bit late with my two cents, but I also agree that an easy way to toggle between between multiple libraries is a must. I know, you could use multiple profiles, or switch between databases in 'Preferences>Advanced', but those are all awkward workarounds.
Like many of the people commenting above, I would like to keep my different research interests separate and the size of individual databases manageable.
Multiple libraries make it also a lot easier to keep information together in your local file system. For instance, you could just create a database for each research topic in the same folder as the relevant documents. Very convenient for (automatically) backing up or copying all information of a single project.
Sorry to bring up an old thread but I found a solution that worked for me on Windows and thought it might help others. You still need two or more profiles as per above postings but you can view them at the same time.
This involves running a second instance of Firefox via Firefox Portable by copying the FirefoxPortable.ini from the "Others/Source" directory back to the main directory and setting "AllowMultipleInstances" to "true". Of course you need to install Zotero on this. It might chew up a bit of memory on an old machine.
Well, a build in function would also be preferable as then you could use it with the stand-alone. Unfortunately, I didn't find any way to implement the multiple-profiles approach to that yet.
profiles in Standalone work exactly the same way as in Firefox:
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23521/shared-comp-user-loginlogout-standalone-or-via-web-browser/
Upgrade Storage
x.
Has there been a breakthrough to make multiple libraries possible in Zotero? I'd really like it.
Like many of the people commenting above, I would like to keep my different research interests separate and the size of individual databases manageable.
Multiple libraries make it also a lot easier to keep information together in your local file system. For instance, you could just create a database for each research topic in the same folder as the relevant documents. Very convenient for (automatically) backing up or copying all information of a single project.
R
This involves running a second instance of Firefox via Firefox Portable by copying the FirefoxPortable.ini from the "Others/Source" directory back to the main directory and setting "AllowMultipleInstances" to "true". Of course you need to install Zotero on this. It might chew up a bit of memory on an old machine.
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23521/shared-comp-user-loginlogout-standalone-or-via-web-browser/