[5.0 beta] finding related items in large collections

castl3

Is there a way to search for related items in a large collection?

I was unable to find any discussion on this topic, yet I can't imagine I'm the first to ask how to do this.

Future release considerations ?

The main windows has many filter option that allow the display of different field, i.e. item type , title, various date options, etc.

Surprisingly, it does have an option to show related items. Is this feature available elsewhere? i.e. plugin, etc.

Is this a future release consideration?

adamsmith

It's not available, no. I do think there's room to do more with item relations, which are not used all that much in Zotero (which is why I wouldn't be surprised if you don't find many threats related to them).

For your specific proposal, though, I'm not sure what exactly you're imagining? If there were a column in the middle panel, what would it contain? Or if you want to approach it from a different angle, what exactly is it that you want to do? (I don't really understand what "search related items in a large collection" would entail -- search for all items with any type of relation?)

castl3

Hi Adam, Thanks for the quick reply

> For your specific proposal, though, I'm not sure what exactly you're imagining?

So the Zotero main window has a way to select or deselect different column option such as item type, notes, etc..

One option, "attachment" ( when selected ) display a blue dot. With notes option it shows the number of notes related to that item, etc.

I guess I'm proposing another select-able field ( exposing the DB field) that indicates one item is related to another ( it doesn't need to show what it is, as is easy to check and select the related item tab).

The ability to relate items ( via the related field) in Zotero 4 or 5 is really an awesome feature. I'm surprise that few people are using this. It is specially useful when connecting dissimilar items that are not necessarily related by search or connected with tags.

Just a thought..

m.lana

hi,
i support this suggestion by castl3:
"another select-able field ( exposing the DB field) that indicates one item is related to another ( it doesn't need to show what it is, as is easy to check and select the related item tab)"

maurizio

migugg

This has been requested before, and I strongly support the request. It appears that some developpers were even working on this, see here
https://github.com/zotero/zotero/pull/175
but it appears that for some reason that this has been unfortunately abandoned. From the state of that discussion, this should be quite easy to implement?