Artwork metadata

kanemu

Is it possible to add fields to info?
Artwork metatdata should be upgraded - seeing that we live in a visual world. It is really frustrating when you are working with images together with texts.
Artwork options should be based on meta data similar to that in iart museums. Failing that it would be great to be able to add your own relevant fields. For instance there is no option to show the artist has signed the work which of course is basic info.

adamsmith

You can't currently add custom fields to item types and won't be in the near future.
While I'm open to adding fields to item types when we revisit them (which should happen sometimes in the next year or two), there's just no way Zotero can be an effective reference manager and allow for full, subject-specific metadata info for all item types. We'd see items with 50+ fields that become completely unmanageable, so we'd need very generic suggestions for additional fields.

dstillman

We're planning to expand the built-in fields early next year, once Zotero 5.0 has been out for a few months and we can turn off sync for Zotero 4.0.

Custom fields will hopefully happen sometime later next year — not for sure, but that's one of our top priorities after Zotero 5.0.

adamsmith

To turn that into a specific request: We're happy to take specific recommendations for additional fields for artwork. They should correspond to accepted metadata schemes in the field and be oriented towards (though not limited to) citability. Most importantly, they need to be fairly general: we can reasonably add some field, but not dozens. So "signed by author" is definitely too specific, but if there's a free-form "special characteristics" (making this up as an example) field for artworks that's commonly used and understood, that'd probably work.

Rintze

We're planning to expand the built-in fields early next year

Dan, I think I asked a few times for more detail on this but never heard back. I'm still wondering if you think we should coordinate a bit more on this between Zotero and CSL. Will you just expand fields based on the issues raised at https://github.com/avram/zotero-bits, or do you plan to make additional changes? Do you need/want a new CSL release, or won't that be necessary right away? I understand you're still focused on 5.0, but it would help if we have some lead time if you'd like to see changes on the side of CSL.

adamsmith

Yeah -- this'll take a lot of work and we should probably coordinate with CSL, but also be able to consult with outside folks (subject librarians etc.), so thinking that progress through a bit in advance would be great (though I realize your main concern now is getting 5.0 out).

dstillman

I'm going to do exactly what you guys tell me to do.

Rintze

That works, I guess :smile:. Still very interested in your thoughts on how you'll implement custom fields. I guess it's fine if they're (at least initially) not hooked up to anything in CSL?

dstillman

Yeah, I'll comment more on custom fields when we're closer to that (and correct, they won't be hooked up to CSL, at least at first), but we can move forward with expanded fixed fields first without worrying about that.

kanemu

Thanks for the info. Sounds as if you are thinking about additional fields sometime in the future. Meanwhile I will need to go for Endnote, which has those options.