I'm trying to explain Our Zotero library is used for various services including web pages, bibliographic lists for some publications, and HAL. This library is also used to feed the institutional archive visible on the intranet. For this reason we cannot use the extra fields as you suggest. We have to follow some rules Importing in HAL a colleague installed BBTXT and then we did an RDF export to the second library on the Intranet. We realized that the extra contained a lot of information that wasn't there before. At first we thought it depended on BBTXT . We manually cleaned up all the fields by removing unwanted information. We eliminated the duplicates, and emptied the bin too At synchronization all the information deleted is returned. Now i can't use your routine for all the items because we had to do an update with RDF files sent by the researchers. Files that contain extra fields with information to delete and keep So to try to solve this issue I export selected data to clean with your tool But when I do an import all the deleted information appears again My bin is clean and duplicata too and I did not syncro
So, first, Zotero’s import translators are going to continue to store information in Extra, so you will either need to plan to delete extra information continuously as you add items or you should ask your platform team to accommodate data being stored in Extra.
Second, exporting and importing is not a good way to manage library data. When you imported data from the RDF file, it’s likely that those items had values stored in Extra. That is likely what you are seeing.
Without actually being able to see your libraries or the relationships among the libraries of your many users, I can’t offer specific advice, but it sounds like this boils down to your workflow involving an overlapping mess of importing and exporting.
That is not a good or reliable workflow. I recommend having one master library where you import items using the Zotero browser connector or a Zotero Group library where users can add items. Item data should be checked at import time. Frequent exporting and importing is likely to lead to lots of duplicated items as well as being confusing as to which version of items you are looking at (e.g., the items before or after you cleaned up the Extra field).
The Zotero developers like @dstillman might be able to help you more, but as a volunteer I don’t have access to any information that would let me give you more specific advice.
Thank you very much for your help! Merci merci beaucoup! vous avez pleinement raison au sujet des exports et imports, le lockdown a compliqué un peu. Encore merci
Upgrade Storage
Note that Extra is intended to store information. You by and large should let extra item information be stored there.
Our Zotero library is used for various services including web pages, bibliographic lists for some publications, and HAL.
This library is also used to feed the institutional archive visible on the intranet.
For this reason we cannot use the extra fields as you suggest.
We have to follow some rules
Importing in HAL a colleague installed BBTXT and then we did an RDF export to the second library on the Intranet.
We realized that the extra contained a lot of information that wasn't there before.
At first we thought it depended on BBTXT .
We manually cleaned up all the fields by removing unwanted information.
We eliminated the duplicates, and emptied the bin too
At synchronization all the information deleted is returned.
Now i can't use your routine for all the items because we had to do an update with RDF files sent by the researchers. Files that contain extra fields with information to delete and keep
So to try to solve this issue I export selected data to clean with your tool
But when I do an import all the deleted information appears again
My bin is clean and duplicata too and I did not syncro
Second, exporting and importing is not a good way to manage library data. When you imported data from the RDF file, it’s likely that those items had values stored in Extra. That is likely what you are seeing.
Without actually being able to see your libraries or the relationships among the libraries of your many users, I can’t offer specific advice, but it sounds like this boils down to your workflow involving an overlapping mess of importing and exporting.
That is not a good or reliable workflow. I recommend having one master library where you import items using the Zotero browser connector or a Zotero Group library where users can add items. Item data should be checked at import time. Frequent exporting and importing is likely to lead to lots of duplicated items as well as being confusing as to which version of items you are looking at (e.g., the items before or after you cleaned up the Extra field).
The Zotero developers like @dstillman might be able to help you more, but as a volunteer I don’t have access to any information that would let me give you more specific advice.