Upgrade StorageZotero as an Artist Inventory Software
I want to preface this by stating that I am aware that Zotero is a bibliographic manager, and not a system for keeping track of an artist's artworks.
And yet, as an artist, I am using Zotero as an inventory software for my artworks. I found it to be much more reliable, less disk space hogging, much more flexible than other specialized software that costs pretty substantial $. My wife, who's an academic, uses&loves Zotero and suggested me to take a look at it when I was frustrated with the existing artist inventory software out there. However, there are some things that I had to tweak/bend/improvise to make it work this way. The good thing is that I believe that there are only some small changes to make Zotero really suitable for artwork inventory. Probably this is not the focus of the Zotero development team, but maybe, if enough people are interested, they could be persuaded to make some changes.
First, my biggest issue is that there's no way to insert an image in the "Info" panel for an "Artwork" entry. That would be extremely useful when going through entries to find an older artwork. Instead, I have to add a note to the artwork entry, and in the note insert a small image of the artwork. It would be great if there's a way to insert images in the Info panel. Usually, other systems have fields for things like "Sold", "Edition size", aso, but those can be added as part of a note. Having an image on the Info pane (as opposed to having to navigate to notes to see the image of the work) would be great.
Second, there's no "Exhibition" entry. Currently I'm using the "Presentation" entry to signify exhibition. It's pretty adequate, but it would be nice to have it titled as is (exhibition) and not presentation. This way, there could be some addition fields added there (e.g. "Juror", "Start Data", "End Date").
These are the two biggest things that I think would turn Zotero into a very useful/practical artist inventory system. I really like it, and will continue to use it, but it would be nice if I would not need to use all these tweaks. Thanks to the development team for such a really good piece of software.
And yet, as an artist, I am using Zotero as an inventory software for my artworks. I found it to be much more reliable, less disk space hogging, much more flexible than other specialized software that costs pretty substantial $. My wife, who's an academic, uses&loves Zotero and suggested me to take a look at it when I was frustrated with the existing artist inventory software out there. However, there are some things that I had to tweak/bend/improvise to make it work this way. The good thing is that I believe that there are only some small changes to make Zotero really suitable for artwork inventory. Probably this is not the focus of the Zotero development team, but maybe, if enough people are interested, they could be persuaded to make some changes.
First, my biggest issue is that there's no way to insert an image in the "Info" panel for an "Artwork" entry. That would be extremely useful when going through entries to find an older artwork. Instead, I have to add a note to the artwork entry, and in the note insert a small image of the artwork. It would be great if there's a way to insert images in the Info panel. Usually, other systems have fields for things like "Sold", "Edition size", aso, but those can be added as part of a note. Having an image on the Info pane (as opposed to having to navigate to notes to see the image of the work) would be great.
Second, there's no "Exhibition" entry. Currently I'm using the "Presentation" entry to signify exhibition. It's pretty adequate, but it would be nice to have it titled as is (exhibition) and not presentation. This way, there could be some addition fields added there (e.g. "Juror", "Start Data", "End Date").
These are the two biggest things that I think would turn Zotero into a very useful/practical artist inventory system. I really like it, and will continue to use it, but it would be nice if I would not need to use all these tweaks. Thanks to the development team for such a really good piece of software.
(You'll likely be able to transfer a Zotero library to that once it's out.)