types and modelling; practical example

I've commented a lot on the problems of reference typing (and more relational data modeling). I'd like to illustrate this with a practical example.

Here is an interview transcript from a Frontline documentary. I would like to cite this, and therefore to store it with Zotero.

OK, so how do I do this? First obvious step is to click the "create new from current page." This pulls in the title from the HTML; in this case "FRONTLINE: spying on the home front: interviews: john yoo | PBS".

Not really Zotero's fault here that a whole bunch of metadata is merged into the title, but the question is, where do I move and/or modify that data?

Well, I can do this:

title = "interview with John Yoo"
website title = "Frontline: spying on the home front"

What's missing? I have no obvious and convenient place to put "PBS" (publisher) and/or "pbs.org" (main organization site), nor the interviewee.

OK, what happens if I change the type to "interview"? I actually lose most of the most crucial information! There is nowhere to put the website information, for example.

The only thing I gain is an "interview with" field. If I move "John Yoo" there and switch back to webpage (since it can store more of the data), that is changed to "contributor".

I don't presume to offer a clean answer of how to solve these kinds of problems, but just wanted to point out a good example. My solution here it to use the generic webpage type, and to designate Yoo as the "author". It's a little awkward, but oh well.
  • edited July 7, 2007
    Here's another one I just came across: I have a memo published in an edited book. I need all the fields in the "letter" type, and also the fields (or better yet, auto-complete linking to) for the book container.

    [edit: this is actually an annoying problem. If use letter, I can't represent any of the publishing details. If I use book section, I throw out crucial information, such as the memo date.]
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