Access Date for Web Sites No Longer Saved or Cited in Stand Alone

kmccr1

All of a sudden, Zotero stand alone stopped recording and citing access dates for web pages. Has anyone else run into this problem?

I would appreciate any help I can get on this one. Thanks in advance!

aurimas

Could you be more specific? Where are you saving metadata from? What citation style are you using?

kmccr1

I am just typing the metadata or copying and pasting it from my old-school citations in my Word file. I am saving in Chicago.

adamsmith

The Chicago Manual advises against using access dates in citations, which is why Zotero doesn't include them in Chicago style. You will find them included in many other styles.

kmccr1

@adam smith,

Wow! I was working with the 16th edition, 14.245, "Citations of website content." That section reads, "Also include a publication date or date of revision or modification; if no such date can be determined, include an access date."

Where can I look to find the info you accessed?

Thanks so much for your assistance!

adamsmith

That's what the style does: If you _don't_ have a publication date for a website, it includes an accessed date.
Otherwise, 14.7 applies:
"Chicago does not therefore require access dates in its published citations of electronic sources unless no date of publication or revision can be determined from the source (see 14.8)."

kmccr1

Yes, I see. That's an important distinction, which I'll have to remember. I'm still a student. So, I'm thinking that I will need follow the instructions at the end of 14.7 and include access dates when I do not have dates of publication or revision. That means I'll have to type the access dates in and remember them since Zotero won't store them.

adamsmith

that's a different topic and I can't reproduce that: Zotero stores accessed dates for every webpage that you save. Could you tell us exactly what you're doing?

kmccr1

I'm going to "My Library," hitting the plus sign, finding the appropriate item type on the drop-down list, cutting and pasting the corresponding info into the boxes in Zotero from my Word file. Hitting save. Everything is being saved except the access dates.

aurimas

Are you typing in the access date? If so, what exactly are you typing in? Lastly, you can type in things like "today" and "yesterday".

Also, it's much more practical to save web pages to Zotero by visiting them, right-clicking the page -> Save Zotero Snapshot from Current Page.

adamsmith

Oh, because if you enter the information by hand, Zotero obviously doesn't assume you have accessed anything at the time you're entering it.

If you really do want to go that route, the accessed field understands the word "today" as a shortcut for today's date, but what I'd recommend is to use the "Create New Item from Current Page" button if you're using the Firefox add-on or, if using standalone with a connector, right-click --> Save as Zotero Snapshot (or similar wording). Both of these will automatically save both URL and access date and you can then manually enter any missing information.

Also, all items imported via the URL bar icon are saved with access dates.

None of this behavior has changed for months (probably years), so I'm not sure what the "all of a sudden" in your first post refers to.

aurimas

Hitting save.

Sounds like you're doing this on zotero.org, in which case the methods admasmith and I describe above do not apply (and zotero.org might not recognize "today" or "yesterday" either). We highly recommend installing a local Zotero client though. It will make working with Zotero a whole lot easier.

aurimas

Sorry for the double post, but yeah, it looks like zotero.org is a bit picky on how it accepts Accessed dates. You have to type them in in the format YYYY-MM-DD or it won't be accepted (maybe some other format works too, but I didn't find one). It's extra annoying because it won't produce an error message or any other notice to the user.

@fcheslack, could we add an indicator that the dates have to be entered in this format. It would also be good to produce an error if trying to save the date that is not recognized.

dstillman

It should be a date/time picker, really (and same in the client).

aurimas

I wouldn't forgo the text entry though. I, personally, find date pickers cumbersome, particularly since they require use of the mouse. It also makes it impossible to copy paste dates. But, it can certainly be an option.

dstillman

There are date pickers that allow text input. Here's a nice-seeming one: http://eternicode.github.io/bootstrap-datepicker/

EvanWRowe

I'm having a similar problem. Zotero is always getting the dates wrong! Or not citing them. I even uploaded a PDF that has metadata showing the piece was from 2002, and it still automatically puts it down as (n.d)