Upgrade Storageadvice on creating a History "Evidence Style"
I am new to zotero. I was working on a historical evidence reference citing style based on Elizabeth Shown Mills' book "Evidence Explained". In fact, before I discovered zotero, I wrote a little Fortran code (yeah, I know...) that used html like style templates for the 170 types (with the 3 of each: Biblio, First, Subsequent) and render them in rtf when the appropriate style's variables are provided. Then I was learning Java (for its platform independent GUI and to recode the Fortran in it) to do what zotero has done beyond my wildest dreams.
So, I want to abandon my approach and try to define an Evidence Style in zotero. I have poked around, and have found in the jar file the csl styles, etc. The closest style to what I want is Chicago Manual of Style (Full Note With Bibliography). Also called CMOS Humanities Style, I am told. I have imported a slightly marked up csl style, and am on the way to learning more.
But I don't want to abandon my data model. It seems like it is more general than zotero currently allows, and could be used for any style. Anyway, I think I'm about to hit a brick wall on what can be done in style files (csl) vs. having to modify parts of the code that one shouldn't modify.
There are 12 categories of evidence (currently, it will likely grow with time) for a total of 170 category types (each of the 12 have a varying number of subcategories). Each subcategory has a formatting template that contains its own special list of items (parameters). I have 531 item types (variables) that are used in the 170 x 3 reference types. Remember, all worked out before I discovered zotero, so I had no constraints, and my model seemed practical and minimalist, at least to me.
I found in zotero.properties about 36 itemTypes and a lot of itemFields. But it seems that one is locked into using only them.
Is that correct?
Or is there a way to "override" them in a style file? Or must one modify the code where it shouldn't be modified?
I seem to have one more level of category than zotero currently allows. However, I could collapse that by instead of defining subtypes of the 12 to make 170, I could just incorporate the name of the 12 as a prefix to a single category type list of 170. I gather that that would fit the current zotero model.
But then I also need my 531 itemFields to stick with my current parameterization of the templates. Many can be mapped to what I see in the current itemFields, but many can not.
I suppose that I could modify zotero.properties to what I want, and make a csl style file based on it (once I figure out more than I know now) and use it in a separate instance of Firefox than my "normal" zotero. But that seems to defeat much of the purpose of zotero. And maybe, I might be on to a way that zotero should be generalized.
And I haven't discovered yet where the pop up list of particular itemFields for a given style comes from when you, say, click on "Book" as the type. Could some maybe point out where this is done? This is all only beginning to come into focus for me.
I'd appreciate any tips or pointers that that gurus can offer on all this.
Thanks,
John
So, I want to abandon my approach and try to define an Evidence Style in zotero. I have poked around, and have found in the jar file the csl styles, etc. The closest style to what I want is Chicago Manual of Style (Full Note With Bibliography). Also called CMOS Humanities Style, I am told. I have imported a slightly marked up csl style, and am on the way to learning more.
But I don't want to abandon my data model. It seems like it is more general than zotero currently allows, and could be used for any style. Anyway, I think I'm about to hit a brick wall on what can be done in style files (csl) vs. having to modify parts of the code that one shouldn't modify.
There are 12 categories of evidence (currently, it will likely grow with time) for a total of 170 category types (each of the 12 have a varying number of subcategories). Each subcategory has a formatting template that contains its own special list of items (parameters). I have 531 item types (variables) that are used in the 170 x 3 reference types. Remember, all worked out before I discovered zotero, so I had no constraints, and my model seemed practical and minimalist, at least to me.
I found in zotero.properties about 36 itemTypes and a lot of itemFields. But it seems that one is locked into using only them.
Is that correct?
Or is there a way to "override" them in a style file? Or must one modify the code where it shouldn't be modified?
I seem to have one more level of category than zotero currently allows. However, I could collapse that by instead of defining subtypes of the 12 to make 170, I could just incorporate the name of the 12 as a prefix to a single category type list of 170. I gather that that would fit the current zotero model.
But then I also need my 531 itemFields to stick with my current parameterization of the templates. Many can be mapped to what I see in the current itemFields, but many can not.
I suppose that I could modify zotero.properties to what I want, and make a csl style file based on it (once I figure out more than I know now) and use it in a separate instance of Firefox than my "normal" zotero. But that seems to defeat much of the purpose of zotero. And maybe, I might be on to a way that zotero should be generalized.
And I haven't discovered yet where the pop up list of particular itemFields for a given style comes from when you, say, click on "Book" as the type. Could some maybe point out where this is done? This is all only beginning to come into focus for me.
I'd appreciate any tips or pointers that that gurus can offer on all this.
Thanks,
John
I'm probably not a guru, but from what I understand that you want, Zotero does not seem to be what you need. Zotero is a powerful tool to collect and cite bibliographic information and research notes. It is not a generic database manager, which is more along the lines of what you would seem to need.
You cannot create new item types without modifying the code.
You cannot create new or rename old variables without modifying the code.
(and by code I mean the Zotero/csl engine, not the style files obviously).
This, imho, makes sense for what Zotero is made out to be, and allows it to do that with great efficiency and a very minimal learning effort, but it does not allow the type of customization that your project seems to require.
Obviously all parts of the Zotero code are open source, so the "shouldn't be modified" really depends on your abilities, but I'd guess that once you get into hacking the engine, you'd be pretty much on your own.
Does anyone know of any other bibliographic programs that might do what I need "out of the box"?
Thanks!
John
How to do we work with Zotero to recognize the Evidence Explained methodology? Who do we talk to? Who do we write to?
I'm hoping to learn from you that, yes, "generalizing the data model to allow styles to define additional types and itemField types seems like a natural evolution."
It's possible a good sized audience would be interested in seeing and building the functionality John describes.
I'm guessing this would involve a group, one we might help foster, working as John had begun, to build functionality into Zotero, so that the discipline of genealogy would also be recognized by Zotero.
Our specific project, then, could secondarily dovetail in support.
We at least believe our project has industry-wide implications.
How do we now advance the dialog John started 18 months ago? --GJ
I still have very little idea _what_ you are trying to put into Zotero. The current types are more flexible than they might first appear, and there are plans to expand the fields and types available (and soon!), but only in cases where there is a well-documented need. I haven't seen any clear explanation of what you're trying to do, so I can't tell whether Zotero can do it, nor what data you can't seem to fit into Zotero's current model.
For information on the current discussion of new types and fields, see http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/15636/
I haven't seen John's work to know his train of thought.
As a general rule, genealogical citations involve a wide range of unpublished, often privately held materials-- it takes more "fields," especially to reference those item types.
Mills' _Evidence Explained_ work is state of the art methodology.
Many people in history and philology work extensively with private, unpublished and archival materials (including me!), so you can assume that we'll understand your explanation if you provide some example data, field names, example citations, etc.
ajlyon and adamsmith are quite right: when it comes to working with historical evidence, we all have a pretty solid idea of what's involved. Historical research, writing, and teaching are in fact my day job. While we do plan to continue to generalize and expand Zotero's underlying data model, it's likely that what you want to do is already possible.
What is the latest on this? I'm surprised that Zotero doesn't yet have a way to link with Ancestry.com or the other genealogy sites. It would be amazing to save a document you found there with a click in your Zotero DB; then be able to cite it correctly using EE format (as discussed earlier in this thread) while writing the proof paper afterwards. Can anyone tell me the latest on this?
E
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/345475#Comment_345475
ESM chimes in. Entertaining read.
To answer your question: the trick is to use Zotero with its fixed fields for initial "ingestion" of your sources via its various web-browser plugins and other web-scraping abilities. Do initial clean-up in there (title case, setting of Place, whatever needs cleaning up).
To leverage what you now have in Zotero to an automatically-generated EE3 citation, I can only help you if you use a Mac. For myself (on a Mac), the program that extracts information from Zotero to make my own self-built EE3 templates (I do own a copy of Elizabeth's book), is called BibDesk. Like Zotero, BibDesk is free and open-source. From BibDesk, I can auto-produce strings of words between fields (needed for census citations, and almost anything downloaded from a "database with images"). More importantly however, I can CREATE new fields and even adjust them with various strings that can be auto-populated from drop-down menus. Obviously, you'll need this level of utility for a multi-layered citation.
For Zotero-BibDesk integration, I suggest a spectacular add-on called "Zot2Bib" which automatically places everything ingested into Zotero, also into BibDesk. Consider also "Better BibTex for Zotero" as another Zotero add-on.
Then head over to BibDesk and build genealogy templates based on the EE3 quick checks that. You will indeed have to create fields that don't even exist in Zotero, and macros to auto-produce words before or after those fields i.e. "enumeration district."
Final step: copy the auto-produced, and formatted citation and paste it into your tree-building software, italics in all. Voila!
@AbeJellinek has just fixed/updated the Ancestry.com import
We'll also have some additional variables for archival citations available in the near future. This is still at a high level of abstractions and there's not much new in terms of custom fields or item types.