Generally, APA strongly wants you to include the URL for an item if available. If you have a URL you don’t want cited, add that to the item as a Link to URI attachment, rather than in the URL field.
Unfortunately that means I have to manually do that for 300 books. Which I hoped could be avoided somehow. Is there a style that is similar to APA 6th but does not include the URL?
Is the full text available at the URLs? If so, I recommend you leave it. Otherwise, you could edit the APA style to remove the URL. APA does very strongly prefer URL over publisher/place for book and chapter citations.
Yeah, but Zotero pulls random URLs. So if you use google books to pull the info because you can't be asked to type the entire thing by hand it will pull the google books result. And that just looks horrible. And, for my field, makes no sense. There is no point in having a 90 year old book by google books url. I guess I could edit the code for APA, but wouldn't that get overwritten in the next update?
I think using google books, which is a hybrid of a full-text and catalog site is the problem here. If you just want to import old books, use a library catalog -- Worldcat if they're non-US books, Library of Congress if they're published in the US.
In your case, I would instead use the Zotero JavaScript console to batch edit items that have “books.google.com” in their URL field and replace that field with “”.
I had the same situation and found an easier solution: in Zotero go to Edit > Preferences > Cite > Style Editor select APA 6 or 7 in dropdown copy and paste the whole code to an editor search this line (somewhere around 1345): <else-if variable="URL"> paste this line above the found line: <else-if type="book"/> result should look this: <else-if type="book"/> <else-if variable="URL">
copy and paste the whole code back to the Zotero style editor save it done
Upgrade Storage
Is there a style that is similar to APA 6th but does not include the URL?
I guess I could edit the code for APA, but wouldn't that get overwritten in the next update?
on editing styles & preventing them from being overwritten.
I think using google books, which is a hybrid of a full-text and catalog site is the problem here. If you just want to import old books, use a library catalog -- Worldcat if they're non-US books, Library of Congress if they're published in the US.
I use google books because worldcat often does not find the books I need, which is strange.
See https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/javascript_api#batch_editing
in Zotero go to Edit > Preferences > Cite > Style Editor
select APA 6 or 7 in dropdown
copy and paste the whole code to an editor
search this line (somewhere around 1345):
<else-if variable="URL">paste this line above the found line:
<else-if type="book"/>result should look this:
<else-if type="book"/>
<else-if variable="URL">
copy and paste the whole code back to the Zotero style editor
save it
done