Feature Request: Check to see if a web page is already in collection

Norm Sash

(Thread moved to Feature Requests)...

I've searched through the forum and faq and haven't been able to answer this...

I often like to record a web page into my collection and put it into a sub-collection. But if I browse to a web page and click zotero, how do I know that particular page is already in a collection? Other than doing an advanced search (time consuming) I don't know of a way to determine where a page is recorded. Somewhat similar to bookmarking a page... when I visit the page I would like to see a quick indication that the page is already in a collection, and better, where in the collection it is. Ideas?

adamsmith

There isn't a great solution:
There are a couple of threads on this - can't find the one that discusses the technical details but see e.g. here:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/26691/show-item-status-in-address-bar-icon/

Just matching the URL, as bookmarks do, just wouldn't work reliably enough and end up just being confusing.

Norm Sash

Thanks for the pointer, Adam. Being just a casual coder I could see some problems with implementing an "existing" check, but so many other bookmark apps and resource apps are able to do this, so I would think Zotero would be able to do the same. One of my favorites is Diigo (bookmarking) which changes the color of the icon in the toolbar if the page is already captured, and if you click the icon it shows you all the bookmarks assigned. Hopefully Zotero can get some type of existing check done.

adamsmith

difference is that diigo is a bookmarking app and Zotero is a reference manager - because of that, Zotero imports from many databases where URLs change - many library catalogs with session IDs, for example. Also, from a user's perspective, importing the same book from the Library of Congress and Worldcat is still the same book etc. None of these are issues that a bookmarking app needs to deal with, so they just look at the URL, truncated at # and that's it.
And implementing a solution that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't is going to cause confusion.

mel47

I can't do it myself, but is it possible to detect if the new import is a duplicate (with the same process already implemented)? If so, ask me what to do?
Thanks

adamsmith

that's basically what the plugin the other thread links to does. The problem is handling this for Zotero Standalone and the connectors. From what Simon says that's probably possible, but a substantial amount of work.