Storing linked file online without a local copy to have an offline "catalog" (vs library)

seeingtheforest

Is there any way to have a library full of items, collections, tags, etc... but have the linked file be online somewhere? The reason I ask is I'm putting together a library that I would like to share widely, but dont expect most people to want or be able to download all of it (will likely be 20+GB and targeted to people in the developing world). It would be great if they could just download a copy of the database, be able to browse and search it (especially using tags) and then download files as needed.

I have come across the plugin for creating a website based on a Zotero library, which I suppose could be hosted and used for searching and downloading, but I really would love to have an "offline catalog" .

I suppose it would be something akin to Microsoft OneDrive's functionality of Files On-Demand - you can see "shadow" versions of the files in your OneDrive folder, but have to download them in order to use them. Is there something like this that is compatible with Zotero?

seeingtheforest

Oh wow, I didnt even know that the Groups function exists - it seems to be exactly this. At $120/yr for unlimited storage, that may be the solution. I'll have to look more closely at the terms of service to see how my goals would work with it.

I suppose my question then is: is there a way to make a Groups sort of function work with an external/3rd party service (or even just your own organization's internal network/intranet/website)?

adamsmith

I suppose my question then is: is there a way to make a Groups sort of function work with an external/3rd party service (or even just your own organization's internal network/intranet/website)?

Currently the answer is basically no:
- Groups don't work with webDav
- Groups don't allow for linking to files since that would in most instances not work across users
- While the Zotero server code is entirely open source and it's technically doable to set up your own, there is currently no easy way to do this and it's not officially supported, so you'd mostly be on your own for that.

In the future:
- Allowing relative links for groups and thus file links is doable and devs have indicated they'd take related patches (but those would need to include relative links for groups, not just enabling links, which is trivial) but are not very likely to do it themselves.
- Devs have indicated that they're hoping to release a docker container that would make deploying Zotero server locally much easier.

seeingtheforest

Thank you very much!