Inserting bibliography

dnh

Hi,

maybe a not so obvious request, but I am sitting here writing a syllabus for my students and I wonder whether there is an easy way to insert full bibliographic information instead of references and a separate reference list.

Say, so it looks like this right away:
Week 19:
Smurf (2002): Smurf Politics. Smurftown: Smurf Publications.

I do know that I can copy&paste full info in the clipboard and then insert it, but then I would not have a direct link to Zotero.

Thanks,
DNH

adamsmith

The easiest way would probably be to modify a style.
You could just take one of the Chicago styles (Full note I'd guess)
and change:
<style xmlns="http://purl.org/net/xbiblio/csl" class="note" xml:lang="en">
to
<style xmlns="http://purl.org/net/xbiblio/csl" class="in-text" xml:lang="en">

http://www.zotero.org/support/csl_simple_edits for how to do that (it's easy and will only take 5-10mins, I promise)

dnh

Thanks, works fine.

srippon

Thanks adamsmith I followed your helpful instructions here after googling for an hour or more to try to figure out how to use zotero for help writing a syllabus. The instructions ain't easy to find!!!

This can't be a very unusual use case among scholars, so a suggestion for the team - could it be properly documented in the Zotero help, and simplified a bit? I called my style modified as above "Chicago for syllabus writers, no ibid" BUT I'm not going to add it to the repository because that procedure looks too complicated for me! Couldn't it be a standard style supplied with zotero though?

adamsmith

This actually does appear to be quite a rare case - this is the first question I've seen about this since this thread, which was 3 years ago.

Obviously many people use Zotero to create syllabi, but I don't think many people see the need for live citations in their syllabi, so they use quick copy or create bibliography, that's certainly what I do.

(I won't add this to the repository - we need to individually maintain each Chicago style on the repository and there're already so many that it's getting tedious).

srippon

I wonder if it's a rare use case because it's so hard to discover via google-fu? Perhaps users think zotero just isn't designed for this.

I found that quick copy is a kludge in MS Word because it mucks up the formatting (I'm inserting the citations into a table in Word, and in the inserted text, I get the wrong font, and paragraph formatting/margins set in such a way that the beginning of the citation is outside the table cell and cannot be read). The insert citation method doesn't have these problems.

The insert citation method is also better because it allows you to easily update citations later, e.g. to correct errors, or to provide institution-specific call numbers or web links in your syllabus.

I don't really understand how to write a syllabus using Zotero's create bibliography feature. Could you direct me to instructions for it, specifically for syllabus writing? (Is that method flexible, e.g. allowing me to associate readings with topics and dates, distinguish between optional and required readings? Does it permit me to write unrelated front and end matter for the syllabus?)

adamsmith

"Create Bibliography" is just the long-form version of quick copy, i.e. right-click on one or multiple items in Zotero --> Create Bibliography --> Copy to Clipboard. It has all the same advantages/disadvantages as quickcopy (both with this method and with quick copy (by holding shift while dragging) you can also create citations rather than bib entries, which would leave the formatting in nice shape).

Zotero is flexible so that you can find solutions that work for you - and we're happy if you want to promote the solution(s) you found via twitter/blog/word-to-mouth etc. - but before I include something that requires more maintenance work from (in the case of citation styles and documentation) unpaid volunteers, I'll want to see a clearer expression of demand than two forum posts in three years.