For Devs--What should trainers know?

denlinkd

After training folks on Zotero for more than a decade, I've gotten to the point where I've memorized my script, predicted any possible errors, and can answer just about any question that comes up. This includes:

-Adding sources (Connector, Manually, by ISBN)
-Editing metadata (changing a book to a book section and adding chapter details)
-Organizing library (collections, detect duplicates, adding sort columns, search library)
-Preferences (Backup & sync, setting Quick Copy default style, adding additional styles)
-Citing three ways (Quick Copy, right-click menu, Word add-in)

Of course I don't have time in a 60-minute workshop to go over everything, but the above gets folks fairly confident with most of the basics.

Developers or Moderators, what are some frequent questions you get here in the forums that might reflect an emerging need for additional training? What am I training on that might be a waste of time, and what should I replace it with?

adamsmith

I think this is solid, I wouldn't take anything out, really; I typically don't talk about adding data manually at all and just cover it in the context of converting to book section. Experience from the forums is that if anything people do too much manual entry anyway. No one has ever had trouble finding it.

The three things I'd probably mention because they're hard to find and super useful are
- entering data in sentence case so it works with all styles and
- colored tags
- right-click on the connector item gives you additional import options (e.g. useful to import reference lists by DOI)

Things I'd point to as further resources beyond explaining them in a 1h workshop are
- add-ons, in particular ZotFile and Zutilo (and BBT if you have a tech/science audience)
- The "Search by Example" function of editor.citationstyles.org
-

denlinkd

Oh, the right-click connector menu on a reference list is something rarely ever use, and thus never teach. Great suggestion!