References vs Bibliography

SteveThackery

Colleagues!

In my Zotero library I have all the documents I have consulted on the particular topic I'm writing about. However, I have not cited all of them in my text.

What I want is to have a References section at the end of my document with all the library items I have cited. Then I want a Bibliography section which lists all the library items I have *not* cited.

This is a fairly normal requirement for academic papers: the Bibliography forms a "recommended reading list" and is in addition to the References.

Can I do this in Zotero?

dstillman

One way to do this might be to use Reference Extractor to select all Zotero items in your library that you've cited, drag those into a temporary collection, create a saved search for [Collection] [is not] ["temp collection"], and then use "Create Bibliography from Collection" to create a static bibliography from that collection that you paste at the end of the text.

dstillman

(But I personally can't recall anyone else asking for this over many years, so I don't think this is really a "fairly normal requirement".)

dstillman

And, in case it's not clear, you can also create a more complicated saved search, with, say, [Collection] [is] [x] and [Collection] [is not] [y]. What you're asking for ("all the library items I have *not* cited") doesn't even make sense in the context of Zotero or similar tools, which people use for years across many projects. But it would be normal to create a collection for a given project, and you could then use that along with a temporary collection from Reference Extractor in a saved search to find items you hadn't yet cited in that project.

SteveThackery

dstillman: Thank you so much for your detailed replies. You will appreciate I am new to Zotero and haven't used any similar products before.

I do accept that maybe my requirement might be unusual. My paper is about the transmission of sound through water, and in my library I have every source I've consulted. Some of them aren't worth citing in my text, but would count as "further reading". Hence I wanted to list them in a separate section.

I have, in fact, created a folder hierarchy under 'My Library' in which all the underwater acoustics stuff is filed, so in the future I could create new hierarchies and enter references for completely different topics, which I believe is in line with the way you describe Zotero being used: as a repository for all my sources, regardless of subject area.

I had no idea about the sophisticated search facilities available, so thank you for pointing them out and I will read up about them. The approach you outline sounds like it should work fine.

Thank you again - very much appreciated.