URL Link Features

Cohen5442
As far as I know only the Pub Med database gives as part of the reference a URL pointing back to the online site there may be other situations but I am not aware but everyone is different. Zotero needs to put a link to the original site where the item is references in this info url field. In this way the reports generated could be very useful for collaboration. For example I wanted to post somewhere the information on a web link to the data I have gathered on James Eells work as well as Gu and Yau's work on conformal mapping. If this was pub med I simply could use a report. The ideal would be your group library feature but links are not published in the group setting to my knowedge making the references close to useless from my standpoint at least for collaboration. My solution at present is to give access to everybody in the group to my personal library hardly ideal. I could always create another account and use it for synching but this is why I though group libraries were there to begin with. Perhaps this is already handled but I did not see how to do it.
  • fcheslack
    I'm not really clear on what you want here.

    Is there some information missing from
    http://www.zotero.org/groups/mapping-seminar/878/items/collection/158131
    and
    http://www.zotero.org/groups/mapping-seminar/878/items/collection/158132
    ?

    The website libraries will be enhanced in the future, but I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for.
  • Cohen5442
    I simply would have liked all the Web links in the original Library which was
    my personal copy to appear in the group library. These links are the main
    worth from the standpoint of collaboration for groups in my opinion.
  • fcheslack
    Sorry for the confusion. Link attachments aren't being copied over to group libraries at the moment, but this will be fixed in the next beta build due out in the next week.
  • Flo_La
    It would indeed be a great enhancement if the links that are attached to items can be synced in group libraries. A probably common usage example is: A research group has a local group server where PDFs are stored. They share a zotero group library and want to be able to access the (locally) stored files from zotero.
    I am really looking forward to the next beta.
  • lmiller
    Here's a question, following up on Flo_La's comment above:

    If the next beta build will copy link attachments, could a group library then link to PDFs of references in a shared Dropbox folder? (Thereby fixing the problem of not being able to share file attachments in addition to references?)

    I have been asked to create a zotero library for a project that has 4 team members who need to work from the same database (including access to PDFs of references), and from what I understand, there is really no easy way to do this at the moment. But it seems like a link to a shared Dropbox file might do the trick through the group library route. Does this make sense, or am I way off base here?

    Thanks!
  • noksagt
    There are multiple threads on group attachments. Group attachments will come sometime.
  • Flo_La
    Sorry to ask about this again, but if I understood fcheslack's comment right syncing of attachment links with group libraries was supposed to be included in version 2.0b5. Unfortunately in this version I can't even drag and drop any link item onto a group library anymore. I also can't add any link item to a group by any other means. Please note that I don't mean files, so there should not be any copyright issues or the like. Also, contrary to the thread linked by noksagt (http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/7176/multiple-accounts-syncing/#Item_2), syncing link attachments would not require any storage solutions. I still feel this is an essential feature for group collaboration.
  • dstillman
    Sorry—link attachment dragging didn't make it into 2.0b5.
    I also can't add any link item to a group by any other means.
    Link attachments can still be added to group libraries as child items using the Attachments tab or by right-clicking on an item. This is generally desirable, anyway: a PDF of an article, rather than being a standalone attachment, should be a child attachment of an item containing bibliographic metadata for that article.

    This raises an interesting point, though. It's no longer possible to create standalone links in 2.0b5 in either local or group libraries, for good reasons, but for URL-accessible files, web link attachments are essentially equivalent to linked file attachments ("Link to File"). It's still possible to create standalone file attachments—say, to link a relevant Word document into a project collection—so, for consistency, it may be necessary to restore the ability to create standalone links to single files (and just not web pages, which are covered by web page items).
  • Flo_La
    Dan, you are right about the ability to create link items in group libraries. I agree that I would only want to have the links as child items of bibliographic items. However, at this point (2.0b5) you can only create links to webpages/URLs. In my case I would like to add links to (local pdf) files and that is not possible via right click menu or elsewhere.
    It's still possible to create standalone file attachments
    Unfortunately this is not possible in group libraries. If push the + icon while I am in a group library and select "Add link to file..." I get the message "Files cannot currently be added to group libraries." I assume that that is just a matter of using the same text for the error message because, technically, a link to a file is not a file itself. Hence my comment about no storage solution being necessary for groups that have their own common access server and further there should be no copyright issues with links either.

    So, to get it straight: Links to files as well as files themselves as item attachments in group libraries are on the list of features for future releases? Thanks!
  • noksagt
    In my case I would like to add links to (local pdf) files and that is not possible via right click menu or elsewhere.
    You can load the page in firefox using a file:// URL & save a link to the current page. This being said, I don't see how these local 'file://' links are very useful in group libraries? The other members of your group won't have those files intrinsically (only in special circumstances), so most group members would just have broken links.
    It's still possible to create standalone file attachments
    Unfortunately this is not possible in group libraries.
    Correct. Dan meant that this is possible in your own library, not in group libraries & suggested that stand-alone links in group libraries would be analogous.
  • Flo_La
    I would argue that these "special circumstances" under which group members have access to a common server are actually quite common. Just take a case like ours: We are a group of ~20 researchers at a university and we have a file server where we store all kinds of documents, among them the pdfs from literature research. These are the files that I would like to link to from the group library items. Basically, any company/university that has any kind of IT infrastructure could benefit from local file storage (and group library links to them).

    Thanks for your suggestion to use a file:// URL. I tried it, but the link that zotero creates is "about:blank". You can't just edit the link destination after it is created either. (The approach does work for files that can be displayed in firefox. For other file types that have to be downloaded by firefox this only creates about:blank links. So this is not a general solution for us either.)

    I think we might have to wait until the item attachment syncing will be improved.
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