Saving a YouTube link causing database problems?

samanthaculp

Hi, I've been using Zotero (unlimited storage) happily for months now. i only use my own laptop. Today, I saved a bunch of journal articles/PDFs from JStor, all loaded correctly in Zotero, then saved a few YouTube video references and added notes/tags to them, all loaded fine in Zotero. Closed the program, and then 30 minutes later, I opened it again, and all the recent journal articles AND YouTube link references are gone. When I search in where files are stored in Zotero file path, the journal article PDFs are THERE, but still not showing in Zotero window even after syncing. Closing, re-opening, re-syncing again, etc. I will re-upload those manually, but no sign of my YouTube webpage links or notes, etc. Has anybody had this issue? Is there something weird about YouTube webpage links that corrupts a whole day's work in Zotero? Thank you! Samantha

dstillman

How are you determining that the items are gone? You have some YouTube items with notes in your online library created within the last couple hours.

samanthaculp

Hi, thanks for your reply! OK, looking at my online library, I couldn't see them in the folder I know I had saved them to -- but then checked the overall "My Library" folder and you're right! The ones from earlier today ARE there, just moved somehow from the "Futurism" subject folder where I had saved them and clearly saw them, to my overall "My Library" folder. Is there a known reason why this happens? I'm relieved to know they're there, but would love for it to be stable and consistent when I save an item to a folder, that it stays there. Thank you! Samantha

dstillman

They didn't "move" to My Library — everything is always in My Library.

How did you save the items? Items wouldn't be in a collection if you never added them to it or removed them from it.

samanthaculp

When I save webpages, I use the Zotero extension in Google Chrome (on a mac laptop). I have the webpage open, ie, a YouTube link, then i click the Zotero extension button in the Chrome browser, then a little pop-up appears that says, "Saving to: " and then a collection destination (current default is "Futurism" which is the research collection I'm working in), and I wait for the pop-up to disappear, and then check in my desktop version of Zotero that it has indeed saved to the "Futurism" collection folder. Earlier today, I had been saving various things including the Youtube videos to that collection folder, and saw them appear there in my Zotero desktop version. Then I closed the application, and later when I reopened it, still in "Futurism" as the selected collection, they weren't there, only in My Library (as you helpfully pointed out). I'm just wondering why they seemed to be in the "Futurism" collection and then later weren't there, only My Library. Here's a screenshot of how it looks when I add a webpage to that selected collection:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vv8m9blnjyoddbb/Screen Shot 2021-07-17 at 4.20.07 PM.jpg?dl=0

dstillman

I suspect you're just misremembering and had My Library selected when you saved. If something appears in a collection in Zotero, it's there, and the only way it gets removed is if you remove it. These items were synced to the web library within a few seconds of being added and haven't changed since, so they weren't removed at some later point in time.

Note that the Zotero Connector saves to the selected collection in Zotero, so if, say, you had been saving to that collection, but then switched to My Library in Zotero and then went back to the browser and saved something else, it wouldn't save to the collection.

If you can reproduce a problem of something disappearing from a collection, we'd want to know the exact steps to do so, but there's no indication here that that happened.

samanthaculp

Thanks very much, you must be right! I thought I was viewing that collection but must not have been. Glad to find the materials in any case, and grateful for your help!