Hierarchical groups

sdspieg
Here's our use case. We have a large 'distributed' research project with a number of work packages and with different teams working on different work packages. We created a separate group library for each work package. The report of each work package was written collaboratively on google docs with Zotero 'scannable cite' fields - which works fantastically BTW.

We are now starting to write the final report. We are drafting it again on Google Docs and we would like to be able to insert the citation fields from the different group libraries. What is the smartest way to do that?

We still can't create hierarchical group libraries, right? [And actually - is there a good reason for that?] So should we create a local (hierarchical) library, where somebody downloads the cloud-based citation by logging on to our (paid) institutional Zotero subscription, creates local sub-libraries by copy/pasting all cites from the 'groups' to our single institutional 'My Library' account. and where all others then sync that collective 'My Library' to their respective computers? Would that even work if they tried to add a citation to Google Docs? Would the field references be identical across all users and would we all be able to generate the same bibliography from our respective local 'My Libraries'? Or are there any other solutions?

Thanks!

-Stephan
  • adamsmith
    Nice to see ODF Scan being used for such a large scale project.

    As long as the user who actually performs the scan and selects the citation style in LibreOffice is a member of all groups, this will just work. ODF Scan (and Zotero's LibreOffice integration) works with references from different libraries.

    The only caveat here is that the same item cited from multiple libraries will show up as a duplicate.

    Though maybe I'm missing part of the question.
  • sdspieg
    Oh - we've used ODF scan a bunch of times - in quite a few large-scale projects. So kudos to you (and Frank?) for setting this up! If you're interested, here is our instructional page which about 30 people have used on this project: https://rizzoma.com/topic/e5e38cbd47a50eda66dbc49d2fed1068/0_b_83h7_6jh2c/

    But so maybe (correction - apparently! :) ) I did not express myself as clearly as I had hoped. We now have all of these different Zotero groups. And we all have our individual Zotero accounts. So when we work with Google Docs, we're usually logged into our individual accounts (which we see in 'My Library'), but we also see the group libraries that we have been invited to under 'Group Libraries'.

    YOUR suggestion is to invite everybody to every single group. And then any one of us who would want to add a citation from one any of those groups to the collaborative google doc should be able to do so. Now that I think about it, I agree that is probably the preferred option.

    MY suggested solution was for one of us, logged on under our institutional account, to drag the relevant 'group' libraries from the Zotero cloud in a 'nested' way to 'My library' and to sync that. We could then each also log onto our institutional account, sync our computers and drag and drop the cites into the google doc from our 'My library' instead of from the group. And so my question was really whether that would 'fly'.

    I have about 60 group libraries in my Zotero library and quite a few more personal libraries. All of them with multiple 100s of citations in them. So looking for the 'right' citation that I want to cite in the right group folder is not trivial. I would definitely prefer being able to have hierarchical group libraries, whereby I can just find the author alphabetically in the higher-level group, which would contain all the lower-level groups, instead of having to wade through 10s of lower-level libraries,

    I'm not sure whether I expressed myself more or less intelligibly this time around :) But I guess we'll go with 'your' solution Sebastian. But I still hope that at some point in time, we'll be able to have hierarchical group libraries just like we now can have hierarchical libraries in 'My Library'.

    Thanks!

    -Stephan
  • adamsmith
    edited March 23, 2016
    OUR suggestion is to invite everybody to every single group. And then any one of us who would want to add a citation from one any of those groups to the collaborative google doc should be able to do so. Now that I think about it, I agree that is probably the preferred option.
    not quite -- my solution was to have everyone cite from the groups the use/belong to. You only need a single, master user to belong to all groups for the scan and conversion to work.

    But I guess I'm not quite clear on what needs to be possible: I had assumed everyone needs to be able to cite from "their" group libraries to a single joint document. But if, instead, everyone needs to be able to cite from _every_ group library, then yes, they'll need to join.

    I don't really think hierarchical groups make a lot of sense, no. What does make sense (and you're not the first one to ask for) is search across groups. That's tricky to implement, mainly from a GUI perspective, but I'm pretty sure Dan agrees that it'd be nice to have. Not going to happen super soon, though.

    edit: and ODF scan is, conservatively speaking, 80% Frank's work. I helped a bit and wrote all documentation.
  • sdspieg
    edited March 24, 2016
    Sebastian - more precisely: SOME (the ones working on the final report) should (ideally) be able to cite from _every_ group library. So that's why I think 'your' solution is better than 'mine'.

    I still happen to think that hierarchical groups make more sense than searching across non-hierarchical groups, because on Google Docs we just can't do that. If we were working in Microsoft Word - then I'd agree with you. There I can open the Zotero dialogue box and search across libraries. But on Google Docs (and please bear in mind we have people across the world working with us on these docs), all we can do is drag 'n drop. So I'd agree with you (and Dan) that for 'standard' users, search across groups is Pareto superior. But not for people like us, who really work (/write) collaboratively on Google Docs/LibreOffice. So I guess the question then becomes where you think the future lies: with the (proprietary/'closed innovation') Microsoft solutions of this world, or with the (more) 'open' Google Docs/LibreOffice solutions....

    So I would implore you (and Dan) to think about who Zotero is 'targeting': 'proprietary' Microsoft Word users, OR 'open source' Google Docs/LibreOffice users! Looking at Zotero's 'DNA', I'd gather the latter... But maybe I'm mistaken?
  • adamsmith
    I don't see why you wouldn't benefit from the ability search across groups in Zotero for your workflow: search for an item, then drag to gdoc. In Word integration, search across libraries exists already, so that's not what I'm talking about; it also does in LibreOffice, so this has nothing to do with open source. Google Docs are no less proprietary than Word

    (Btw. there is the ability -- with some set up -- to get the Zotero word processor integration picker to be available anywhere and produce scannable cites: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/51168/scrivener-and-zotero-integration/#Comment_248099)
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