creation of a second group library to reduce synching time of first group library?

ktwig2

Hello, I have been grateful for your help in past. We have a group library with nine contributors. Since it is now very large and taking a long time to synch for those who do not use it regularly, we have decided to create a second group library and will transfer all pictorial material (historic photos and maps)to this new library. After doing so we will delete all items copied from the original library. In doing so we hope to create two smaller libraries which will individually take less time to synch. We also envisage that fewer additions will be made to the second library (it will be more for reference) so this willnot need to synch so often. Before embarking on this course of action, I wanted to check your views and to ascertain that it will indeed make synching quicker and our lives easier? Warm regards Karen

dstillman

Syncing doesn't work that way. Except in rare situations, only incremental changes are ever synced, so dividing up your data into two separate libraries wouldn't save any time. The only reason to have multiple libraries (other than for normal organizational reasons) would be if only some people needed each library.

ktwig2

Hello Dan, Thankyou for clarifying this. It is very helpful.
Karen

ktwig2

Hello Dan, Just another point of clarification. I was imagining that two separate group libraries would be an advantage to new people joining our group library ie having to wait while all existing material on Zotero synched with their home computer.
Would it not be possible to select manual synch for group library one and wait for this to synch. Then go through the same process for group library two. I had imagined it would be a quicker process doing it this way for a new member than trying to synch one large group library all at once?

dstillman

Well, it wouldn't be about "selecting" manual sync for anything — you can't set sync settings for individual groups — but if the new users joined one group at a time and synced in between, diving up the data could help. (Zotero currently syncs the data for all groups a user is part of at once.)

But what exactly is slow? If you're just waiting for files to sync — i.e., you see the blue progress bar (which you can hover over to see progress) — then doing this wouldn't make any sense, since Zotero only ever syncs a few files a time. If it's data syncing that's taking a long time, separating the data could make some sense. Your group library doesn't have a huge number of items, though, so the data-syncing part shouldn't be that slow, and it'd be more annoying for new users to have to worry about carefully joining one group, syncing, joining another, etc.

The next major version of Zotero (still a number of months out, but coming) will also sync items in much smaller batches rather than all at once, so while doing this could have some short-term benefits for new users, it wouldn't be helpful in the long run. Unless you're adding many thousands more items, I wouldn't worry about it and just tell new users joining the group that their first sync might take a while (an hour max?) to complete.

ktwig2

Thankyou Dan again for your very prompt and helpful clarifications. It is very much appreciated.