For the "introduction by..." etc. - how would we implement that in Zotero without creating four or so different new creator types? I agree that this should be possible, but we'll have to think about the logistics of it too and it can't be having to deal with a whole bunch of new creators including all the logistics that that entails - one new one would probably be doable. Maybe the "genre" field could help?
Also, I would like to avoid a new item type for forewords/introductions, etc. For many styles we can just handle this with the books section item type in connection with "Book author", but I don't think we can handle MLA or Chicago well. Thoughts on the logistics of that would be welcome, too.
A single variable like "frontmatter", with a controlled list for content and corresponding localized terms should do the trick. It would need UI support and a small extension to CSL.
yeah, that makes sense - that would do it for citing frontmatter (and aftermatter).
But I don't really see how we can also use it for including introductions to be included in the citations of entire books. (an additional issue may be that this is a "can" provision in the sense that, at least in CMS, you're only supposed to include a reference to the foreword if it's of special importance as in Aurelep's examples (Friedman, Hobsbawm, Chomsky...) above. I guess we would just handle this by leaving it to users to include the information in the citation data or not.)
Unless your area of scholarship is at all textual, bibliographic, publishing, material culture of books or print media, or in any way historiographic – in all of these cases it is no longer optional or restricted to "special" cases: all these details become required for each and every entry.
Sorry, I neglected to indicate that, consistently with MLA, Chicago also provides examples of including reference to this frontmatter in the context of reprints and subsequent editions:
14.119 Reprint editions and modern editions
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature. 1836. Facsimile of the first edition, with an introduction by Jaroslav Pelikan. Boston: Beacon, 1985.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925. Reprinted with preface and notes by Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Collier Books, 1992. Page references are to the 1992 edition.
Unless your area of scholarship is at all textual, bibliographic, publishing, material culture of books or print media, or in any way historiographic – in all of these cases it is no longer optional or restricted to "special" cases: all these details become required for each and every entry.
right - but since CMS explicitly mandates to _only_ include that type of information where it's especially relevant, we'll have to leave that to the user.
Also, at some point we need to consider trade-offs. Something like the Gatsby edition requires a complete 2nd set of bibliographical info. I realize it's important to some people and it's in CMS etc. but at some point the costs of added complexity will outweigh the benefits. CMS especially has a lot of rather free-flowing text in these bibliographic entries. I just don't think that can be done automatically. Something like "Facsimile of the first edition, with an introduction by" - how is that ever going to be put into a systematic interface? Also, the data-mobility people will go crazy over that - I don't think that type of information is even in MODS, let alone any other data transport format. I wonder if it wouldn't be better to just allow users to manually edit individual bibliography entries for such cases.
As I've written here and as others have written before, the film item should definitely be improved.
- About every citation style I know (except MLA) requires a country of origin. - Many styles require a second title field – either the international release title or the translated title. - MLA, for example, requires the production company. - MLA asks for screenwriter and actors in some situation. - Many styles, MLA for example, require more information about the specific version (DVD, VHS etc.).
Here are some examples from the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7. ed.)
It's a Wonderful Life. Dir. Frank Capra. Perf. James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, and Thomas Mitchell. RKO, 1946. Film.
Like Water for Chocolate [Como agua para chocolate]. Screenplay by Laura Esquivel. Dir. Alfonso Arau. Perf. Lumi Cavazos, Marco Lombardi, and Regina Torne. Miramax, 1993. Film.
Mifune, Tashiro, perf. Rashomon. Dir. Akira Kurosawa. 1950. Home Vision, 2001. Videocassette. Noujaim, Jehane, dir. Control Room. Lions Gate, 2004. DVD.
Renoir, Jean, dir. Grand Illusion [La grande illusion]. Perf. Jean Cabin and Erich von Stroheim. 1938. Voyager, 1987. Laser disc.
generally agreed on movies needing better support
- the second title field is not something that Zotero should deal with piecemeal, so that will be left for a comprehenseive implementation across item type.
- I don't see a production company in the MLA cites. Miramax, Home Vision etc. should - appropriately - go into the existing distributor field.
- Format information should go into the format field - I thought MLA already did cite that - if not we could probably make that happen already.
- yes to country of origin
- We definitely need to be able to deal with directors correctly (we don't currently have a label for directors. Performers are tricky - these "in some situations one should/can" type rules are pretty impossible to automate.
Feel free to start an issue for films here, summarizing the current state of the discussion
https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/issues
You'r right, MLA requires distributor (which is really strange, since it's a completely useless information which varies from country to country). I wouldn't really consider actors to be a top priority either …
which is really strange, since it's a completely useless information which varies from country to country
really? Distribution to movie theaters seems to be pretty international - I've certainly seen "Miramax" at the beginning of movies all over the world. For DVDs etc. this may vary, but then the distributor seems quiteimportant and equivalent to a book publisher - we'd want to know which version of a DVD is being cited/used.
really? Distribution to movie theaters seems to be pretty international - I've certainly seen "Miramax" at the beginning of movies all over the world. For DVDs etc. this may vary, but then the distributor seems quiteimportant and equivalent to a book publisher - we'd want to know which version of a DVD is being cited/used.
In many instances you have a world distribution and a local distributor.
It would seem like movies cited as such need the world distributor, specific DVDs etc. the local distributor. Anyway - the main question would be - is the production company ever required? CMS doesn't appear to require it either.
Doesn't the cut of the film sometimes vary between distributors?
Yes it can. But in general, things don't tend to be so strict here. I did my PhD in film studies and teach film studies at university and in my experience the MLA citation is not the rule in film studies (English and German speaking).
A rule of thumb is if you don't "quote" a film in detail (meaning: giving a detailed analysis of a scene with timecode) you won't give the distributor or DVD version or length in the filmography. Of course, if versions differ radically you have to account for that. But detailed information on the very specific DVD release or whatever is often only given if you work with timecodes (as it turns out, timecodes are not very reliable, they are not identical between different players since they are not "hard printed" on the DVD but calculated by the player).
Another issue: TV series are often quoted differently than films if you refer to the whole series and not a single episode. Here you often cite the TV station which produced and the producer/creator of a series, not a director.
I don't have a single style reference for this, but this how it is done in many publications:
Lost. Damon Lidelof/Carlton Cuse/J. J. Abrams, USA, ABC 2004–2010.
As you can see, date ranges get important again here. Also open-ended ones:
I'd like to remind you that some other software distinguishes between "Conference Proceedings" (Refer format) = "CONF" (RIS format) and "Conference Paper" (Refer) = "CPAPER" (RIS).
Up to now there is no item type in Zotero which matches CPAPER.
RIS and Refer import convert both types to the Zotero type "Conference Paper".
In http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/18247/ris-export-field-missing-for-conference-papers-jf-/ , adamsmith suggested using "presentation" for CPAPER.
However, import and export of "presentation" is inconsistent:
"RIS.js" maps "presentation" to "GEN".
"ReferBibIX.js" maps it to "Report".
"Zotero RDF.js" maps "presentation" to "ConferenceProceedings" but does not map "conferencePaper" to anything.
"Bibliontology RDF.js" maps "presentation" to "Slideshow".
"Wikipedia Citation Templates.js" maps both "conferencePaper" and "report" to "Cite conference" and "presentation" to "Cite paper".
So there are at least three issues:
decide whether import type "CPAPER" = "Conference Paper" should be imported to "presentation",
make handling of "presentation" consistent throughout the translators,
add handling of "conferencePaper" to Zotero RDF.js,
New Item Type : Working Paper. Similar to Journal Article.
New Field common to all or most Items : rating (5* to 1* and 'unclassified').
This should appear in the central pane and be sortable, so we can quickly get back the papers which we feel are 'best'.
"Document is missing these fields: Place and Series"
Some people would like to add all fields to the Document item type. I don't know if that will happen for Zotero 2.1, but some kind of number and place seem pretty reasonable.
What is the appropriate item type for a reference to the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP)? See
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/
"Document" seems excessively general for this. Ordinarily, the MPEP is cited inline simply by section number, e.g.,
MPEP [section symbol] [section number]
https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/issues/35
suggests report for manuals, which sound right to me.
I'd have to see more details about citations - e.g. is this even cited in the bibliography, if so how? - for details.
The MPEP is a legal document. It specifies the details of how the Patent Office implements the statutes and regulations that govern the examination of a patent application. Since the MPEP changes over time, I assume that a full citation to the MPEP at least would give the edition and edition date, and possibly also the revision date.
I am new to Zotero, considering using it for content management for a blog. If the cite forms I need do not exist and if I can't create my own item types and fields to compensate, it probably won't work well for this purpose.
I can't tell you if the cite forms don't exist without seeing a fully formatted sample citation.
Looking at how libraries catalog this, you could also just go with book - it has a publisher, an edition - sure looks like a book to me.
There are hundreds of different "types" of documents if you look closely enough for differences - citation managers (and style guides, and CMS for that matter) necessarily generalize across them.
An item type for user guides/(operating) manuals might be of great benefit. I currently don't now a type that includes this kind of documents, but I would also be open and thankful for suggestions. In many documents mentioning more sophisticated devices or software there is an urgent need to cite a user guide/(operating) manual, which often have special properties like mentioning a company or institution as an author. The company usually also serves as the publisher and a user guide doesn't has any ISBN, ISSN or DOI. So there are plenty of reasons to include this as a new item type, but as I mentioned, I'm open for discussions.
see above - the current suggestion is to use report for manuals. If that doesn't work - how would manual differ from report in a) required fields and/or b) required citations.
I love zotero, and I am going to love it even more with some of the changes (esp. original date of publication field) that you have announced for 3.1. Like alinghi I am curious about when it might be released. Thanks!
AFAIK there is no specific time frame for this. Because it involves changes in the Zotero data-structure, which in turn affect syncing the whole process is quite a bit more involved than it may seem. As a consequence, I don't think the ETA is currently very predictable - it's very much something that everyone involved in Zotero coding is very eager to get to work, though.
Upgrade Storage
Also, I would like to avoid a new item type for forewords/introductions, etc. For many styles we can just handle this with the books section item type in connection with "Book author", but I don't think we can handle MLA or Chicago well. Thoughts on the logistics of that would be welcome, too.
But I don't really see how we can also use it for including introductions to be included in the citations of entire books. (an additional issue may be that this is a "can" provision in the sense that, at least in CMS, you're only supposed to include a reference to the foreword if it's of special importance as in Aurelep's examples (Friedman, Hobsbawm, Chomsky...) above. I guess we would just handle this by leaving it to users to include the information in the citation data or not.)
Unless your area of scholarship is at all textual, bibliographic, publishing, material culture of books or print media, or in any way historiographic – in all of these cases it is no longer optional or restricted to "special" cases: all these details become required for each and every entry.
14.119 Reprint editions and modern editions
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature. 1836. Facsimile of the first edition, with an introduction by Jaroslav Pelikan. Boston: Beacon, 1985.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925. Reprinted with preface and notes by Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Collier Books, 1992. Page references are to the 1992 edition.
Also, at some point we need to consider trade-offs. Something like the Gatsby edition requires a complete 2nd set of bibliographical info. I realize it's important to some people and it's in CMS etc. but at some point the costs of added complexity will outweigh the benefits.
CMS especially has a lot of rather free-flowing text in these bibliographic entries. I just don't think that can be done automatically. Something like "Facsimile of the first edition, with an introduction by" - how is that ever going to be put into a systematic interface? Also, the data-mobility people will go crazy over that - I don't think that type of information is even in MODS, let alone any other data transport format.
I wonder if it wouldn't be better to just allow users to manually edit individual bibliography entries for such cases.
- About every citation style I know (except MLA) requires a country of origin.
- Many styles require a second title field – either the international release title or the translated title.
- MLA, for example, requires the production company.
- MLA asks for screenwriter and actors in some situation.
- Many styles, MLA for example, require more information about the specific version (DVD, VHS etc.).
Here are some examples from the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7. ed.)
It's a Wonderful Life. Dir. Frank Capra. Perf. James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, and Thomas Mitchell. RKO, 1946. Film.
Like Water for Chocolate [Como agua para chocolate]. Screenplay by Laura Esquivel. Dir. Alfonso Arau. Perf. Lumi Cavazos, Marco Lombardi, and Regina Torne. Miramax, 1993. Film.
Mifune, Tashiro, perf. Rashomon. Dir. Akira Kurosawa. 1950. Home Vision, 2001. Videocassette.
Noujaim, Jehane, dir. Control Room. Lions Gate, 2004. DVD.
Renoir, Jean, dir. Grand Illusion [La grande illusion]. Perf. Jean Cabin and
Erich von Stroheim. 1938. Voyager, 1987. Laser disc.
- the second title field is not something that Zotero should deal with piecemeal, so that will be left for a comprehenseive implementation across item type.
- I don't see a production company in the MLA cites. Miramax, Home Vision etc. should - appropriately - go into the existing distributor field.
- Format information should go into the format field - I thought MLA already did cite that - if not we could probably make that happen already.
- yes to country of origin
- We definitely need to be able to deal with directors correctly (we don't currently have a label for directors. Performers are tricky - these "in some situations one should/can" type rules are pretty impossible to automate.
Feel free to start an issue for films here, summarizing the current state of the discussion
https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/issues
A rule of thumb is if you don't "quote" a film in detail (meaning: giving a detailed analysis of a scene with timecode) you won't give the distributor or DVD version or length in the filmography. Of course, if versions differ radically you have to account for that. But detailed information on the very specific DVD release or whatever is often only given if you work with timecodes (as it turns out, timecodes are not very reliable, they are not identical between different players since they are not "hard printed" on the DVD but calculated by the player).
Another issue: TV series are often quoted differently than films if you refer to the whole series and not a single episode. Here you often cite the TV station which produced and the producer/creator of a series, not a director.
I don't have a single style reference for this, but this how it is done in many publications:
Lost. Damon Lidelof/Carlton Cuse/J. J. Abrams, USA, ABC 2004–2010.
As you can see, date ranges get important again here. Also open-ended ones:
True Blood. Alan Ball, USA, HBO 2003– .
Up to now there is no item type in Zotero which matches CPAPER.
RIS and Refer import convert both types to the Zotero type "Conference Paper".
In http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/18247/ris-export-field-missing-for-conference-papers-jf-/ , adamsmith suggested using "presentation" for CPAPER.
However, import and export of "presentation" is inconsistent:
"RIS.js" maps "presentation" to "GEN".
"ReferBibIX.js" maps it to "Report".
"Zotero RDF.js" maps "presentation" to "ConferenceProceedings" but does not map "conferencePaper" to anything.
"Bibliontology RDF.js" maps "presentation" to "Slideshow".
"Wikipedia Citation Templates.js" maps both "conferencePaper" and "report" to "Cite conference" and "presentation" to "Cite paper".
So there are at least three issues:
decide whether import type "CPAPER" = "Conference Paper" should be imported to "presentation",
make handling of "presentation" consistent throughout the translators,
add handling of "conferencePaper" to Zotero RDF.js,
New Field common to all or most Items : rating (5* to 1* and 'unclassified').
This should appear in the central pane and be sortable, so we can quickly get back the papers which we feel are 'best'.
For rating fields search the forums - there are a bunch on threads on this.
Some people would like to add all fields to the Document item type. I don't know if that will happen for Zotero 2.1, but some kind of number and place seem pretty reasonable.
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/
"Document" seems excessively general for this. Ordinarily, the MPEP is cited inline simply by section number, e.g.,
MPEP [section symbol] [section number]
Or even more simply,
MPEP [section number]
suggests report for manuals, which sound right to me.
I'd have to see more details about citations - e.g. is this even cited in the bibliography, if so how? - for details.
The MPEP is a legal document. It specifies the details of how the Patent Office implements the statutes and regulations that govern the examination of a patent application. Since the MPEP changes over time, I assume that a full citation to the MPEP at least would give the edition and edition date, and possibly also the revision date.
I am new to Zotero, considering using it for content management for a blog. If the cite forms I need do not exist and if I can't create my own item types and fields to compensate, it probably won't work well for this purpose.
Looking at how libraries catalog this, you could also just go with book - it has a publisher, an edition - sure looks like a book to me.
There are hundreds of different "types" of documents if you look closely enough for differences - citation managers (and style guides, and CMS for that matter) necessarily generalize across them.
I currently don't now a type that includes this kind of documents, but I would also be open and thankful for suggestions.
In many documents mentioning more sophisticated devices or software there is an urgent need to cite a user guide/(operating) manual, which often have special properties like mentioning a company or institution as an author. The company usually also serves as the publisher and a user guide doesn't has any ISBN, ISSN or DOI.
So there are plenty of reasons to include this as a new item type, but as I mentioned, I'm open for discussions.
Do you have a date for Zotero 3.1 ?
Do you have a list of changes ?
Can we have information on the future of Zotero ?
thank you
Some easy changes have been made in 3.0.9.