Group of 20 interns using Zotero & Transfer from RefWorks

CGSHR
Hi,

I am an intern working at the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights in Boston. Zotero was recently introduced to our group of about 20 interns and a few permanent staff. We do academic research and produce annotated bibliographies on a variety of topics on gender and security. We are trying to figure out how to best integrate Zotero into our work.

Challenges we are faced with right now:

1. The Consortium currently has a database of about 4000 entries and all the PDF files are in RefWorks. It seems easy to import the data from RefWorks into Zotero but very hard to either classify or attach the PDF files together. We tried PDF metadata retrieving but only some of the entries are recognized, as not all of our PDFs are on Google Scholar.

2. As we have interns rollover every couple months, we need to gather data from interns before they finish their terms. Is it better to have a common account that all the interns can sync to? Or should we have a Group? What is the best way for multiple individuals to transfer their libraries (PDF attachments quite important) to a common/shared library? We tried to sync a group library to our individual accounts, but it did not work.

Most of the interns are new to Zotero and are still learning how to use it.

Thanks so much for your time and help in advance!
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited July 12, 2013
    Others may have much more to say but I recommend _never_ having multiple users on a single account. A private group is safer. I suppose that the interns will be using more than one computer and not using a single shared computer. Even with a single computer, a single account would allow any user to change or delete records. A private group could provide at least some protection from a single careless or angry intern.

    Even with regular backups, having a rolling group of 20 users is asking for lost time restoring a single user's error.
  • EStrunz
    edited July 12, 2013
    When it comes to groups, I agree wholeheartedly with DWL-SDCA. There's really no good reason to have a single user account in your scenario. You can assign interns "member" status to the group while maintaining admin powers for yourself. This would allow a little more flexibility with permission and facilitate smooth collaboration between the interns.
  • DWL-SDCA
    Alas, RefWorks will not export attachments (pdf files).

    As the CGSHR has parallel interests with my shop, I wrote to Dr. Cohn to offer my assistance. I may be able to provide Zotero records (but not full text) for most of the journal articles in your Ref Works database. I am offering this at no cost to CGSHR. You can get my email address by clicking on my username above.

    With the article metadata it will be simple to get the full text documents from the publishers.
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