Upgrade StorageMLA and City
Whenever I created an MLA bibliography, the format is A MESS! I can go back and fix it, except that zotero failed to record the publication city for ANY of my sources. Now I have to go back and look up every single one.
1. Is there any way to fix this without going back to the books?
2. How do I prevent this from ever happening again?
3. How do I change the citation style so that it's correct (or at least consistent?)
PLEASE HELP!
1. Is there any way to fix this without going back to the books?
2. How do I prevent this from ever happening again?
3. How do I change the citation style so that it's correct (or at least consistent?)
PLEASE HELP!
2. Where did you import your sources from? To prevent this from ever happening again, use a library catalog - when in doubt the Library of Congress - as a source for books and more generally speaking, check items after import to see if they are complete.
3. What's wrong with the MLA citation style?
2. I used the MLA international bibliography for most of it.
3. A lot. Double commas all over the place, Ed. and (eds.) inserted randomly in the middle of names, double last names used, a lot of repetition and weird formatting.
The lack of cities is going to take the most amount of time to fix, obviously. The other stuff I just have to go back and clean up, but it's still ultimately taking more time than doing it all myself by hand to begin with.
It's just not the normal, official MLA format for even the basic sources, which I assumed it would be. Is there any way to fix this?
3. I'm not an MLA expert, but below is what I get and it looks right to me. It sounds like the problem would again be in the data you imported - check how the data looks in Zotero and fix it there, the bibliography should then look right.
Sassen-Koob, Saskia. “New York City’s Informal Economy.” The Informal Economy. Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries. Ed. Alejandro Portes, Manuel Castells, & Laura A Benton. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. 60–77. Print.
Tokman, Victor E. Beyond Regulation. The Informal Economy in Latin America. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992. Print.
---. “Integrating the Informal Sector into the Modernization Process.” SAIS Review 21.1 (2001): 45–60. Print.
We access it through EBSCOhost at my university. I don't know of any other way to access it. I only watched the demo video when I started zotero, but it didn't say anything about only working for certain vendors. What are the correct ones, please?
E.g. MLAIB through EBSCO exports things like (ed. and trans.) as part of the author name. We can try to clean that up, but it's very tricky and they really shouldn't be doing that. Any reference manager importing that data will produce the same type of faulty import as a result.
Other EBSCO databases work just fine.
The way to think about Zotero is that it facilitates your bibliographic work for you, it doesn't do it all by itself. As I say above, you should always check items for accuracy and completeness after import.
Thank you!
There is no alternative to manually cleaning up/completing your data in Zotero. Once that's done, your bibliography will look right.
If you decide to drop Zotero for this project, that's fine; it's just a tool, and you should choose tools that you feel comfortable with.
Some of the problems you mention are things that no one else has mentioned (as far as I know). Zotero has quite a large population of users, so that suggests there may be something unusual in your use of the program. Some items that stand out are:When using Zotero, the citation style is set for the document as a whole. If you change the style, all cites in the document should change to the newly selected style in one go. There isn't a way to mix styles, so it's not clear how you could have used MLA for "most" of the cites. The MLA style applied by Zotero never uses an "(eds.)" label for editors: it would always be formatted as "Ed." or "eds." It is also not possible for the style to insert the label in the middle of a name (it just cannot happen). If you are using the MLA style, the "(eds.)" label, and any labels that appear in the middle of a name, must be written into the name inside your database. If that's the case, it's not a problem with the program: it's a problem with the input data.
It may well be that it will be simpler to cast your citations by hand for your current project. Once it's done, and you have a bit more time, it would be worth revisiting your use of Zotero -- particularly if you will be doing other writing projects in the future -- and work back to the source of these anomalies. It is certainly due to some peculiarity at your end; as I say, we've never seen anything quite like this before, and it's hard to know what advice to give without further information.
As I say above, the problem here (e.g. the (eds.) showing up) is the quality of the imported data from the EBSCO version of that database (I checked, and the data do indeed have those problems). That's going to be an issue with all reference managers in some databases.
So yes, if palettemuse needs one-click perfectly formatted citation from every database s/he uses, reference management software is not for her/him more generally. I think for anyone managing 25 page bibliographies that's a foolish choice in the medium - let alone long - term, but that's obviously up to you.
Although I sometimes use Zotero for writing. I use it as a way to convert records from many publishers into MODS. I move literally thousands of items in and out of Zotero each day. (I convert records, delete them from my Zotero database, and empty the trash frequently.)
The metadata fed from some publishers is so bad that it isn't worth using. Records need to be hand entered. Sometimes, I am astounded at the extraneous tags, labels, and who-knows-what that is improperly included in record fields. Sometimes this is easy to recognize and edit out; other times it is easier to enter it all by hand. Once the correctly formed data is in your database you have it for future revisions to your bibliography. Sometimes, getting the right information into the right fields is as simple as one click. Often it is not. The only way to control the quality of what goes into your Zotero database is to examine it and edit when necessary.
Each time I teach a course on writing, citing, and avoiding plagiarism; I talk about making life easier by using reference management software (and Zotero in particular). I always stress 1) that reference management software can only do so much to automatically correct errors in imported data; and 2) that the metadata must be checked for accuracy. I stress that properly formatted citations are not possible if flawed data goes into the cites. However, I frequently receive complaints from students who simply accepted what the database gave them. Several of the EBSCO databases provide awful metadata. Others, provide perfect metadata.
Zotero is a great tool. Sometimes it is automatic and easy. Sometimes it is easier to hand enter the data.
Zotero correctly formats what is in your database. If what is in your Zotero database is flawed, you get flawed citations.
MLA requires the "sponsor," meaning the owner of a website, and I don't see a field for that information. is that something I'm just going to have to have them fix manually?
URL is optional in MLA, but many of my colleagues require it, and for consistency I should too. Is there a way of getting that to happen? Thanks.
No on the URL, though. It's not terribly hard to manually add URLs for custom versions of styles using the visual editor,
http://steveridout.com/csl/visualEditor/
but I'm not inclined to add this to the existing MLA style or a separate version of that
(Personally I think leaving out the URLs is about the only reasonable thing about the MLA 7th edition, otherwise ranging from impractical to laughable, so I'm maybe not the best person on this anyway...)
If I need to include the online database (such as JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, etc.) is it correct to put that information in the Archive field? That seemed to work, though Zotero did not italicize the database name as it should according to the MLA handbook.
The updated version will appear on the repository within 30mins (check the timestamp). Update your copy of the style by re-installing it from the repository. (See here if you need instructions for installing styles in standalone.)
Any further problems please let us know.