Using Zotero at College

ElizabethGPearson

I have a large Zotero library on my home laptop but want to be able to access it and cite in Word on College computers.

I put Zotero on my desktop - but as standalone. However - obviously I guess - this is not linked to my home Zotero data. But when I log in to Zotero online (at college) and see my library, I can't cite from it in Word.

Do I just need to take my laptop to college to be able to write and cite at college? Or can I use the add-on function for webpages, plus the cite and write in this second location, on a second, institutional pc?

All advice appreciated.

Thanks

aurimas

Are you using a public computer that uses a single account (i.e. there's no logging in, or you log in with a common username and password) or do you log into the computer with your own credentials? The reason I'm asking is that if you sync your Zotero account to a college computer, you don't want someone else who uses that computer messing with your library. There's no "log out" button for Zotero Standalone, so it's not very convenient to use it in a shared environment.

If you do have a personal account on the computer and apparently you were able to install Zotero Standalone already, you just need to sync.

ElizabethGPearson

I got it. Put my details in preferences - bingo. Synched.

It's a log-in computer. Is my standalone safe? ie just on my desktop wherever I log in?

I could use the webpage alone, but then do I lose the facility in Word and the webpage add-on, which is very useful.

Thanks

aurimas

If you're logged in under your account, you're ok.

ElizabethGPearson

Except.. I just logged off and logged on again and now it's saying file not found.. Slightly worried all my files have been deleted (I haven't deleted them).
Can you help?

ElizabethGPearson

although I did accidentally delete one collection

aurimas

Did your Zotero finish syncing? Look at the green circular arrow at the top right of Zotero window. If it's spinning, it's still synching. If there's a red exclamation mark next to it, there was a sync error and you'd want to resolve it. If neither, then click the arrow and see what happens (i.e. do a manual sync)

Edit: although if you're downloading attachments, there would also be a progress bar

ElizabethGPearson

The arrow is just green and not spinning. I have switched off synch since the pdfs vanished.

I'm nervous to do a manual synch as all the pdfs have disappeared from their items. Both from the college standalone, and online. I am hoping they are still there on my laptop standalone at home. Or I'm not sure what I'll do.

Thanks for your input.

aurimas

Zotero doesn't delete anything unless you explicitly tell it to. Most likely you just never synced the attachments from your home computer (or you synced using a service other than zotero.org, like WebDAV)

ElizabethGPearson

Hmm. they were there and then - they were gone! I will find out when I get home I guess.. o_O

aurimas

You were able to open the attachment on your school computer after syncing and now that same attachment is "not found" (i.e. still shows up in Zotero, but you can't open it) from both your school computer _and_ on zotero.org? Do you remember if you did something in Zotero settings? I can't imagine how that could have happened.

ElizabethGPearson

Yes that's it.
And yes I did. I switched off synch after I deleted one folder by accident.. Have I blundered massively..

aurimas

No, that wouldn't have done this.

@Dan, can you see what's going on on the server?

ElizabethGPearson

I think I ran out of storage - could this be the reason?
Just upgraded, so hope it works!

aurimas

That could be the reason why an attachment would not sync from your home computer, but it wouldn't explain why you were able to download the file and then it disappeared. You would have also gotten a message about exhausting your storage space. Let us know if this fixes the issue. We'll also see what Dan says.

ElizabethGPearson

Thanks aurimas. Actually I just reinstalled the whole thing on the college pc and am just synching it. I hope that will work. I should also make sure to delete duplicate files as they must be taking up unnecessary storage and costing me $£$.

Yesterday while synching the wifi connection at College went down. I wonder if that is a factor.

As you'll gather I'm not stunningly technical so your thanks so much for your help.

ElizabethGPearson

Another question - (I seem to have a few but want to get this sorted.)

Logging in on another computer, Zotero standalone is NOT now on my desktop. Just a 'ghost' of it. I thought I could use the webpage instead, but now none of the pdfs are popping up when I click on items on the webpage, having logged in.

Is this normal? Should they be there? Would I be able to drop papers into the web version and cite from it, to save me having to install Standalone on every different hotdesk comptuer I use? Or am I doing something wrong?

And um.. I daren't even ask about citation styles ..

Thanks!

EGP

aurimas

Yesterday while synching the wifi connection at College went down. I wonder if that is a factor.

Zotero should be able to handle things like that.

Would I be able to drop papers into the web version and cite from it, to save me having to install Standalone on every different hotdesk comptuer I use?

That's a somewhat important piece of information. I'm not sure that you'll have a great experience using Zotero in a hot desk environment.

For one, it seems that, while you are able to install Zotero Standalone, that is a local installation. You can probably figure out which parts of the system are synced through the network (Desktop would probably be a good guess) and install Zotero there. Hopefully, your whole User directory is synced, so you might be able to make this work (because Zotero relies on some other locations within your profile directory, which is typically C:\Users\).

If you do manage to install Zotero in a way that syncs, you're now either going to be stuck with relatively long logon times as the computer downloads all of your Zotero data (hopefully that gets cached between logons, so it would only be very slow the first time), or you are likely to experience errors if Zotero needs to access files over the network. It might still be worth a try, but you should be aware of these potential issues. It could also explain why some PDFs are not accessible from different computers, though this should not affect your online account and you should be able to access your PDFs directly from zotero.org.

As for using zotero.org and integrating that with Word, there's currently no great solution. You cannot insert _live_ citations into Word from the website, which means that you lose things like automatic bibliography updating, disambiguation, and possibility of using numeric styles. The only other reasonable alternative is to use http://zotero-odf-scan.github.io/zotero-odf-scan/ This would mean inserting plain text citation markers that you could then convert to live citations. You would also need to download LibreOffice to perform final document formatting.

ElizabethGPearson

Zotero is on my desktop. But only on this one pc that I installed it. I just tried another hotdesk computer - no joy, just the ghost of Zotero on the desktop.

When I installed it the computer asked me for administrator passwords, which I don't have. I just closed those boxes. All seemed fine..

..but actually it's not fine. It's not properly installed except on this one desk.

I think the actual answer is to get a laptop that I can carry around with me. Mine is huge, hence using the college computers.

On a slightly different subject - should I be backing up my Zotero stuff on my own laptop? Or is synching sufficient?

I wish I could buy you in for a day, to sort out all my issues including getting the citation style right. I look at the forums and the suggestions of how to customise styles, and all I see is lots of what looks like code and am just - instantly lost.

Thanks for all your help.

aurimas

Zotero is on my desktop. But only on this one pc that I installed it. I just tried another hotdesk computer - no joy, just the ghost of Zotero on the desktop.

I suspect that it's only a Zotero shortcut that is on your desktop. Though, when you cancelled the administrator password prompt, Zotero should have installed to your user profile folder. I guess not everything in there syncs. You can _try_ installing Zotero directly on the desktop (i.e. during installation, when you have to choose the destination directory for Zotero, choose an empty directory on the Desktop (you should create one ahead of time).

I think the actual answer is to get a laptop that I can carry around with me. Mine is huge, hence using the college computers.

There's also https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/portable_firefox

On a slightly different subject - should I be backing up my Zotero stuff on my own laptop? Or is synching sufficient?

Independent backups are always a good idea. Syncing is not an alternative to backups.

I wish I could buy you in for a day, to sort out all my issues including getting the citation style right. I look at the forums and the suggestions of how to customise styles, and all I see is lots of what looks like code and am just - instantly lost.

You should be able to get some in-person help from your library staff. I would suggest that you talk to them. If they don't know how to help you, they can always direct you back here. But please start a new thread for different questions.

ElizabethGPearson

Thanks.
Actually they are EndNote devotees here, and have courses in it. But although individual tutors recommend Zotero it's a fringe movement at this University. One I'm trying to expand of course.

I'm going to uninstall Zotero on this pc and pay a bit more attention when it reinstalls to where it's going.

Thanks again for all your help.

aurimas

Which university is this, if you don't mind answering?

ElizabethGPearson

Sure, it's King's College London - I've just begun a PhD here and very much like the Zotero look. Had been using Mendeley (and still am as you can do in-text searches), but find the citation system clunky. Plus I love the way Zotero can grab citation information from sources.

aurimas

They seem to have a workshop for Zotero: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/study/handbook/assessment/taught/studyskills.aspx and their bibliographic software comparison page, while very outdated, doesn't have anything negative to say about Zotero.

Zotero even has a citation style for King's College: https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=King's College (I didn't see one available for EndNote)

Mendeley [...] can do in-text searches

Do you mean it highlights search matches inside PDFs? That Zotero can't do, but if you're using Zotero search and you choose "Everything" in the dropdown (and you have indexing enabled, which is the default), Zotero will search within PDFs.

Edit (for fairness):

Plus I love the way Zotero can grab citation information from sources.

Mendeley can too, it's just more limited

ElizabethGPearson

You know far more than me - for which I'm grateful. I confess I had just had a conversation with two librarians last week, and they didn't know about Zotero. So thanks for searching for me.

Yes I mean within PDFs but from the sound of it, Zotero can do that.

Mendeley is more limited. Though still great. I'm not knocking it. I just hadn't used it to cite at MA - I was putting everything in manually.

ElizabethGPearson

I was just getting excited and then tried out the Harvard King's style and it's not actually what is required in my department, which uses footnotes and is slightly different. International Organization is a good near-miss for my requirements, but still not quite right.

I find the citation for webpages in particular is not detailed enough. I'm sure it's a question of just trying lots of styles out.

We use footnotes: Author (year) p.x

And for webpages eg:
'At a Glance: New Terror Plans' via http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4748717.stm accessed 20/4/2013

journals eg:
Shepherd, Laura J. (2007), ‘Victims, Perpetrators and Actors’ Revisited: Exploring the Potential for a
Feminist Reconceptualisation of (International) Security and (Gender) Violence, The British Journal of Politics & International Relations (italics), Vol.9, pp.239–256

Books:
Goldstein, Joshua S. (2003), War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (italics), (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge)

But anyway I'm sure this is now going beyond the parameters of my original enquiry. You just know so much it seems worth asking you.

Thanks again.

aurimas

But anyway I'm sure this is now going beyond the parameters of my original enquiry. You just know so much it seems worth asking you.

Yes, please start a new thread if you need help with that, though we don't generally provide support for institutional styles. That style must have been contributed by someone at King's College. We can give you brief guidance on how to edit the style, but there's not enough manpower on these forums to edit such styles in detail.

ElizabethGPearson

Thanks - I know you're pushed for staff.

Can you help with this though? I'm synching from this hotdesk and getting the following error message:

Component returned failure code: 0x80520008 (NS_ERROR_FILE_ALREADY_EXISTS) [nsIFile.create]

I've reported it - should I assume my synching failed.

aurimas

Go to Preferences -> Sync. Uncheck "Sync Automatically".

Go to Preferences -> Advanced -> Files and Folders -> Show Data Directory. This will open up a File Explorer window. Close Zotero/Firefox.

In the File Explorer window, go into the "storage" directory. Delete all subfolders there. If you can't delete something, that will cause problems.

Start Zotero again. Go to Preferences -> Sync -> Reset. Select "Reset File Sync History" (make sure you're selecting that one and not anything else!!! It's the bottom option), then click Reset button just below.

Close the preference window and click the Sync arrow (top right of Zotero window). See if you encounter the error again.

For future reference, if you submit an error report, you need to post the Report ID here.

ElizabethGPearson

That was great - thanks. I tried to install Zotero so that it is saved somewhere accessible every time I log on. But I failed.

On this subject - I want to upload pdfs to Zotero so that they are accessible from both the webpage and from Standalone in the two different locations I use it. At present I seem only to be succeeding in saving them from local areas. Do you have any advice?

Thanks again.

Lizz

aurimas

Sorry for the delay.

At present I seem only to be succeeding in saving them from local areas

Not really sure what you mean, but you should only need to sync.

Also, if a USB drive is an option for you, I really think you would have an easier time using portable Zotero (might have to keep reinstalling word integration, but that beats installing Zotero over and over again and then syncing)