Adding meta-data in records for grey literature

RLifset

I work with grey literature frequently and as a result have records that start only as a PDF, i.e., no meta data at all. I've run into a few problems:

1) How do I assign an item type to an existing record/reference?
2) Is there a way to import meta-data from Google Scholar or other sources?
3) How do I get fields to display in a record? E.g., if I add a PDF to Zotero, all that shows in the right hand window is the name of the entry, filename, the number of pages and when the record was modified. How do I display a field such as creator?

bwiernik

Generally Report or Website are good item types for grey literature. The most important information will be title, authors/other creators, and a URL/publisher information. Filling in the Type field with a description of the item can also be helpful.

If you find the item on Google Scholar, click the Save to Zotero button in your browser toolbar to import with the data Google Scholar has. This will usually be pretty poor for grey literature items and need to be cleaned up manually after import.

If you have the PDF in Zotero, right click on it and choose Retrieve Metadata. Zotero will Retrieve data fields of possible (it still will likely need clean up). If it can’t find anything, right click again and choose Create Parent Item, then select the appropriate item type and fill in the fields manually.