Upgrade StorageZoteroBib - MLA Citation and template issues
After reviewing ZoteroBib using the MLA templates on 5/24/18, this is what I have noticed thus far:
1. One long template with multiple fields is given for a Journal, Magazine, or Newspaper - there is not a separate option/menu for selecting Print, Online, or from a Database. We would need to explain to our students, that they don't have to fill in all fields.
2. There is no Middle Initial field for authors' middle names for any of the templates, although you can enter the author's middle initial in the first name field.
3. Should the "Library Catalog" field be interpreted as "Library Database?" When I used the Journal template and entered a DOI # and a database name in the Library Catalog field, it generated a correct citation. HOWEVER, when there is no DOI# and I entered just the URL in the URL field, when the citation is generated, both the database name and URL do not appear.
4. ALSO, when I used the Magazine and Newspaper templates and enter a database name AND URL, both of these elements do not appear in the generated citation.
5. Dates - for daily, monthly or weekly periodicals, we need to explain to our students that they will have to abbreviate the months and for weekly or daily periodicals, we need to explain the day, month, and year is enter in that order. If students enter "January 24 2018" as the date, that is what will appear in the generated citation when it should appear as "24 Jan. 2018"
6. We will need to explain to our students that for the Journal, Magazine and Newspaper templates, the "Publication" field is where they enter the name of the journal, magazine or newspaper and the "Title" field is where they enter the article title.
7. There is a "Place" field in the Book template, but MLA 8th edition does not require the publication place.
8. We will need to explain to our students when to use capitalization in publication and article titles.
9. For YouTube videos, the better template to use is the "Web Page" template rather than the "Video Recording" or "Film" templates. When I entered the day, month and year for the YouTube video in the Video Recording and Film templates, only the year showed when I generated the citation. Also, with the Video Recording template, I entered the website name "YouTube" in the "Library Catalog" field since there is no "Web Site Title field."
10. There is no template for an image, so if students need to cite an image from the Web, I would say the best template to use is the "Web Page" template.
1. One long template with multiple fields is given for a Journal, Magazine, or Newspaper - there is not a separate option/menu for selecting Print, Online, or from a Database. We would need to explain to our students, that they don't have to fill in all fields.
2. There is no Middle Initial field for authors' middle names for any of the templates, although you can enter the author's middle initial in the first name field.
3. Should the "Library Catalog" field be interpreted as "Library Database?" When I used the Journal template and entered a DOI # and a database name in the Library Catalog field, it generated a correct citation. HOWEVER, when there is no DOI# and I entered just the URL in the URL field, when the citation is generated, both the database name and URL do not appear.
4. ALSO, when I used the Magazine and Newspaper templates and enter a database name AND URL, both of these elements do not appear in the generated citation.
5. Dates - for daily, monthly or weekly periodicals, we need to explain to our students that they will have to abbreviate the months and for weekly or daily periodicals, we need to explain the day, month, and year is enter in that order. If students enter "January 24 2018" as the date, that is what will appear in the generated citation when it should appear as "24 Jan. 2018"
6. We will need to explain to our students that for the Journal, Magazine and Newspaper templates, the "Publication" field is where they enter the name of the journal, magazine or newspaper and the "Title" field is where they enter the article title.
7. There is a "Place" field in the Book template, but MLA 8th edition does not require the publication place.
8. We will need to explain to our students when to use capitalization in publication and article titles.
9. For YouTube videos, the better template to use is the "Web Page" template rather than the "Video Recording" or "Film" templates. When I entered the day, month and year for the YouTube video in the Video Recording and Film templates, only the year showed when I generated the citation. Also, with the Video Recording template, I entered the website name "YouTube" in the "Library Catalog" field since there is no "Web Site Title field."
10. There is no template for an image, so if students need to cite an image from the Web, I would say the best template to use is the "Web Page" template.
We're happy to discuss things we can do to provide more guidance in the manual editor when using the primary styles, but it wouldn't be a replacement for knowing the basic requirements for the style being used, and it hopefully won't be necessary most of the time.
A few more points: It's true that they don't need to fill in all fields, but they shouldn't really be entering data manually anyway most of the time. The point of ZoteroBib is that it does the work of finding the metadata for you when you enter a URL, identifier, or search term. If you're citing the NYT, you paste in the nytimes.com URL, and it will fill in the information and format the citation appropriately. It will generally do this far better than any other tool. Students would still need to be aware of the basic requirements of the style for cases where full metadata couldn't be retrieved and a few additional fields (e.g., author) needed to be added.
That shouldn't be the case. If you enter "January 24 2018" for a newspaper item, it should appear in the bibliography as "24 Jan. 2018", and does for me. The item types are independent from the style being used. Again, the idea here is really just that you search for the item you're trying to add, it fills in most of the info (which will often include Place), and you check whether the citation is correct. We could theoretically hide Place when MLA is selected and show it again for another style if we thought this was going to be a source of confusion. I'm not sure what you mean there. The MLA style title-cases titles automatically, even if the title is sentence-cased in the editor. Capitalization is mostly an issue with APA, which requires special handling that we explain in the UI.