Selecting a source from a folder not "My Library"

jordanajeff

I am using a Mac and really like the single bar interface when adding citations to my paper. Is there a way when adding a footnote to select a work from a folder/collection instead of from the entirety of "My Library"?

adamsmith

obviously all collections are part of "My Library", so you can select any item, but you cannot restrict the search to a collection, no. (You can switch to the old view by clicking on the little triangle on the left of the quick format bar, though).

jordanajeff

Thanks so much. I know everything is part of My Library but with numerous writing projects and therefore numerous collections/folders, I was hoping to be able to designate.

dstillman

I do think this is an important feature of the classic dialog. Not sure the best way to offer it in the new one. The goal, I would say, should be to get rid of the classic dialog altogether.

I guess the main question is whether it's important to be able to actually browse items in collections or just to restrict the search to a given collection.

aurimas

It's definitely important (at least for me) to be able to browse the references in a particular collection.

adamsmith

people in workshops also tell me that browsing is important, many of them to such a degree that they include switching to the classic view as a recommendation in their workshops/libguides (against my protestations, I shall add, but this gives you a sense of how important they think it is).

aurimas

When I was writing, I was using the classic citation dialog by default as well. I can give you a reason why this is the case. I often know the paper that I want to cite, but I simply don't recall the authors or the title (I usually don't pay attention to these details when I read), but I could easily pick out the paper from the list. Without the classic dialog, I would have to go back to Zotero, find the title, then type it into the new dialog

dstillman

Right. So I guess one option would be to integrate the tree views from the classic dialog into the quick format dialog such that you click an icon or button (or select from the current menu, but this probably needs to be more discoverable) and they appear in the same place as the current search results panel. The search box would then function similarly to the quick search bar in the classic view, scoped to the current collection and filtering the items list, but Return would retain its current magic (and would be equivalent to double-clicking an item in the list).

Alternatively, there could just be a collections drop-down somewhere (to the right of the search bar?) to scope the search, but pressing Return with no input would display the search results panel with all items in the selected library/collection/search, which you could then scroll through.

bwiernik

What if, rather than the classic dialog or trying to put browsing functions into the quick format box, there were a button in the quick format box to open the full Zotero window, with a floating button to insert the selected item? Users needing to browse could click the "Browse" button, find their item, and then click the insert button to populate the selected item into the quick format box. Any affixes or locators could then be added.