Find-and-replace (global changes) for Place and Publisher?

anaselli

Is there a way to do a find-and-replace (i.e., make global changes) for the (a) Place and (b) Publisher cells in items?

I ask because the Society of Biblical Literature just released the 2nd edition of the The SBL Handbook of Style. Details here: http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/SBLHandbookofStyle.aspx. (I note this in another forum discussion: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/43369/the-sbl-handbook-of-style-2nd-edition/ )

The new handbook has a section called "6.1.4.1 Names of Presses" (pp. 76–82), and I need to bring my Zotero library in conformity with this list. In particular, these are the publishers and places that I need to update (or at least confirm) because I haven't entered some of them like this (e.g., I've been entering "Wheaton" instead of "Wheaton, IL"):

Apollos (Leicester)
Ashgate (Burlington, VT; Farnham, Surrey, UK)
Baker Academic (Grand Rapids)
Baker Books (Grand Rapids)
Banner of Truth Trust (London; Carlisle, PA)
Basic Books (New York)
Crossway (Wheaton, IL)
InterVarsity Press (Downers Grove, IL)
Inter-Varsity Press (Leicester; London)
JSOT Press (Sheffield)
Liturgical Press (Collegeville, MN)
SBL Press (Atlanta)
Scholars Press (Missoula, MT; Chico, CA; Atlanta)
Scribner's Sons (New York)
Sheffield Academic (Sheffield)
Tyndale House (Carol Stream, IL)
Tyndale Press (London)
Word (Waco, TX; Dallas; Nashville)
Yale University Press (New Haven)

I currently have over 26,600 items in my Zotero library, so it would be extremely cumbersome to update all the entries manually one by one.

Thanks for letting me know if there is a find-and-replace feature (e.g., find "Wheaton" and replace with "Wheaton, IL").

Andy Naselli

aurimas

Nothing user-friendly available at this point. If you're feeling a bit adventurous, you can try this, but do make backups of your data.

anaselli

Thanks. That's beyond me. I suppose that means my only option is to do this manually.

aurimas

Yes, but technically, the style you're using should not dictate the metadata that you're entering (which should be as complete as possible). OTOH, in the above list there doesn't seem to be any sort of logic behind the way Place should be entered in general and even if Zotero could support such detailed formatting, there would be no way to code it.

I can probably see some sort of plugin (similar to abbreviation filter) substituting in "correct" values given existing metadata.

In any case, none of that will suit your needs currently, so yes, you pretty much have to edit the metadata.