Presenting Zotero information on website

geoffburt

Hello,
My organization committed some resources to creating a large Zotero library of documents in our field (international relations - state building and security), and we're trying to get the most out of it. We were hoping that we could somehow use the Zotero as a document library on our website, with visitors being able to search or at least browse the collection without necessarily having to be Zotero users. I.e. we essentially want to use our Zotero library as a document library on our website. Is this kind of integration possible? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

adamsmith

It really depends on what you want.
Obviously you can link to your Zotero library on zotero.org, which can be browsed by anyone (if you make it public). Note that attachments aren't accessible in public libraries/groups.

You can also use the server api to feed the bibliography into a website etc. http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/server_api/read_api

But if you want to be serious about creating a document library, you should look at repository software like dspace and just use Zotero for the local version of the library.

geoffburt

Thanks so much for your help. I looked at some of the dspace use cases, particularly the university of michigan's document library. I think this should work well for us. So is there an easy way to integrate Zotero with dspace? You said to use Zotero as the local version of the library - what does that mean exactly?

adamsmith

Zotero exports MODS data which you can - I believe - use for dspace. So you could collect and maintain data in Zotero and export it to dspace for presentation.
But that's really a question for the dspace forum/support - give them a list of the export formats supported by Zotero:
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/data_formats
and see if they have any ideas.

FHeimburger

It also depends how you run your website - there are several CMS-plugins which use the API :
- for wordpress there is zotpress http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/zotpress/, which I use to feed a group bibliography to a society webpage here http://www.firstworldwarstudies.org/?page_id=875
- for SPIP there is the realtively recent ZotSPIP http://www.spip-contrib.net/ZotSpip-1-0 with an example here : http://www.ceped.org/spip.php?page=biblio

Similar implementations could be put in place for other CMS.

adamsmith

I just remembered - also have a look at OMEKA http://omeka.org which is developed by the same center at GMU and should work with Zotero more flawlessly (I think there is a plugin)

edit: yep: http://omeka.org/codex/Plugins/ZoteroImport

geoffburt

Thanks to both of you - this is incredibly helpful. Will post the option we end up going with and let you know how it worked.

alandsloane

There's also still MIT's Citeline. Export from Zotero as BibTEX and import into Citeline
http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Citeline_FAQ#What_will_Citeline_do_for_me.3F

It produces HTML which you can link to or embed in your own site.

adamsmith

I wouldn't recommend Citeline - it's no longer maintained or developed (e.g. the Zotero plugin they used to have only works with Zotero 1.0) and they just create displays, not searchable collections.