Upgrade StorageZotero Group for a Class - How does group sharing work?
Hello Zotero Community-
I will be a TA in a class this spring and I'm an avid user of Zotero. I suggested that we set up a Zotero group to for the students so we'd all have access to citation information for all the material presented and a few full text articles that they could access in one central place. As I set about doing this, I realized there are more than a few things I don't understand about the behavior of Groups in Zotero, and I haven't been able to find clear answers after reading the documentation (https://www.zotero.org/support/groups) so I figured I'd ask about it here.
As I understand it, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I can create a new group for the class and invite people as I see fit. To populate the group folder, I will drag all the items required for the class from my library into the group folder. I think that will create entirely new copies of those citations and attachments in the group folder, enabling me to delete any annotations I've made to the attachments in the group folder without messing up the annotations in my personal library.
My questions are:
1) How do I ensure that the full text attachments in the group folder remain "clean"? In my own library I annotate electronic copies of documents, which is great, but I want to make sure that we don't have 30 overlapping annotations on the same PDF in our group folder. How do I enable/instruct students to annotate files in Zotero without having those annotations visible to everyone?
2) If I start a group, will I able able to "transfer ownership" to the faculty member/someone else down the line? I think it would be good for me to set this up, but it should ultimately end up under their control for the long term. If this is impossible I guess I could get them to start the group and to give me advanced permissions.
Thanks in advance,
Ben
I will be a TA in a class this spring and I'm an avid user of Zotero. I suggested that we set up a Zotero group to for the students so we'd all have access to citation information for all the material presented and a few full text articles that they could access in one central place. As I set about doing this, I realized there are more than a few things I don't understand about the behavior of Groups in Zotero, and I haven't been able to find clear answers after reading the documentation (https://www.zotero.org/support/groups) so I figured I'd ask about it here.
As I understand it, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I can create a new group for the class and invite people as I see fit. To populate the group folder, I will drag all the items required for the class from my library into the group folder. I think that will create entirely new copies of those citations and attachments in the group folder, enabling me to delete any annotations I've made to the attachments in the group folder without messing up the annotations in my personal library.
My questions are:
1) How do I ensure that the full text attachments in the group folder remain "clean"? In my own library I annotate electronic copies of documents, which is great, but I want to make sure that we don't have 30 overlapping annotations on the same PDF in our group folder. How do I enable/instruct students to annotate files in Zotero without having those annotations visible to everyone?
2) If I start a group, will I able able to "transfer ownership" to the faculty member/someone else down the line? I think it would be good for me to set this up, but it should ultimately end up under their control for the long term. If this is impossible I guess I could get them to start the group and to give me advanced permissions.
Thanks in advance,
Ben
2) It is easy to transfer ownership of the group to another zotero user. Click "Manage Members" on the Group page to do so.
When you copy an item from your personal library to a group library (by dragging it in the Zotero client), it creates a wholly separate copy of the item. Any changes you make in the group will not affect your personal library (and vice versa). So, you can copy the items from your personal library to the group, then delete the annotations from the attachments in the group copy. Your original copies in your personal library will be intact.
That is really helpful. I don't anticipate reviewing their annotations so I think setting it up as you described is the way to go. I will then tell them if they'd like to populate their Zotero with the class readings they can just drag the group folder into their personal library and go from there.
I really appreciate your help,
Ben