How to maintain separate bibliographies using same profile

kirk86

Hey folks,
I was wondering if it's possible to maintain separate bibliographies using same profile possibly on different folders.

Let me briefly illustrate what I mean.

Usually I maintain my bibliography as follows:

OnlineStorage(GDrive, Dropbox, etc..)
|
|-----articles
````` |----bib
`````````` |----articles.bib
```` |----pdfs
`````````` |----author
``````````````` |----year
|-----ebooks
````` |----bib
`````````` |-----ebooks.bib
````` |----pdfs
`````````` |----stats
`````````` |----programming
`````````` |----physics

Now what I'm asking is if I can replicate the same structure in zotero and how can I do that. I am aware of groups but I don't think they can help with the folder structure that I maintain.
Any ideas would be much appreciated.

adamsmith

I'm not quite sure what you mean by replicating the structure in Zotero. What is the .bib file in Zotero in the analogy?
In what way(s) does just using collections not work?

emilianoeheyns

It looks like you could come close with a combination of collections and tags, but you can't organize your PDFs on disk this way with zotero.

But rather that trying to replicate your on-disk layout: what problem did this layout solve for you? If we understand that, we can see if Zotero has a (perhaps different) way of solving it.

kirk86

"I'm not quite sure what you mean by replicating the structure in Zotero. What is the .bib file in Zotero in the analogy?"

The bib files are 2 in this case, one "articles.bib" just for keeping track of articles and "ebooks.bib" for keeping tracks for my ebook collection.

I don't want to mix those, I don't want to have just one .bib file with both articles and ebooks there.

Is there any solution of using 2 or multiple .bib files at the same time from the same zotero interface?

"In what way(s) does just using collections not work?"

Using collections I can create a similar structure to replicate the one on the physical drive but what about the pfds, I maintain them in separate folders (articles, ebooks), don't wont to put them all in one folder and mess things up. Also think of what happens when I'll chose to rename/move a pdf where should it go (articles, ebooks) folder? There's no way currently to define separate folders.

To my understanding you can only define one folder where all pdfs reside, and I'm trying to avoid that if possible.

"But rather that trying to replicate your on-disk layout: what problem did this layout solve for you? If we understand that, we can see if Zotero has a (perhaps different) way of solving it."

This layout solves the following issues for me, simplicity, efficiency and productivity.
Simplicity, having separate tasks helps you organize and maintain healthier habits. It is simpler to maintain separate and cleaner .bib files than one ginormous where you put all things there, over the years that will be very difficult to manage no matter what ref. manager one might be using.

Efficiency and productivity, having this structure allows me to build a hierarchical mental model where I know what I have and what tasks I need to plan ahead, what things need to updated and what things might be removed.

This way it's easier for me to access my collection either articles or books from anywhere of my N machines and since I'm a terminal guy I can easily compile and share bits and parts without any difficulty.

For instance imagine you're ssh'ed into another computer working on something and suddenly one of you colleagues ask you send them over all articles from author "Webber2015". This way for me is easy, I can navigate to my folder structure w/webber/year, zip and send them everything in one go, my editor can do this since I've configured things this way. Same thing goes for the ebooks collections.

Notice in the above example I didn't had to switch to zotero, open its interface or go online to some library, just from my terminal on my trusty editor as I was writing my experiments in 2 seconds I was able to search, select, zip, and email stuff over as needed.

bwiernik

What you should do is keep two collections in your Zotero library--one for articles and one for ebooks--then use the BetterBibTeX plugin to automatically keep .bib files for each collection updated.

emilianoeheyns

I think you'll be much more comfortable with something like jabref. I'm also a terminal guy (I use zotero only to manage references for use in latex), but if being able to access your articles and metadata using using only ssh is essential to your workflow, and you want precise control over disk layout, zotero is probably not for you.

emilianoeheyns

In Zotero, articles (and their attachments) can live in more than one collection btw, and I've set it up to export various collections to separate bib files.

kirk86

@bwiernik Ah, yeah that might work I forgot that BB can keep track of multiple .bib files but you'll have to export them first, it's like again one of those hidden gems.

Now this makes me think, @emilianoheyns if I export the file hierarchy of a collection and choose keep updated, will that update folder/file structure as well after every change or only the .bib file?

This might actually work....

emilianoeheyns

Only the bib file. For performance reasons, auto-exports don't do attachment export. If you check "keep updated", "export files" is disabled (and vice versa) .

emilianoeheyns

(the reason you have to export them first is that, as a terminal guy, I detest UI work, and where UI is needed I repurpose existing UI where I can get away with it)

kirk86

Thanks folks!