Item Type for Events

Laura Akerman
I don't know if your "Document" item type will be expanded and could serve this need, but, along with the person who wanted something for Exhibitions, I would very much like to capture aspects of conferences and other events (usually from their website, possibly from some other source) and be able to see and sort by certain fields:

Right now I'm using the start date of the conference in the Date field, but that means I have to put the end date somewhere else (only one Date seems to work). Would like Date (single or start) and Date (end) for the conference (Start date would be the most important date, probably far surpassing interest in the date the website or notice was published!). Would also like a Place field. Right now I'm just putting that in the Abstract, but it'd be nice to be able to see at a glance, what country/state/city it's in.

Purpose would be to include information on conferences (future and past) in a group site being built around a common interest. This would make Zotero more useful, enabling people to see what's coming up - and after the conference is over, there would still be an entry for the conference, to which the published proceedings, or individual presentations/powerpoints could be related.

Icing on the cake would be a date field for "CFP first submission" to let folks know whether they have time to get a paper in, but, not essential (it could go in Extra).

Anyone else think this is useful? Any suggestions or plans underway?
  • adamsmith
    edited March 13, 2012
    Date ranges will happen eventually, hopefully in the next version of Zotero, for all item types.
    Some version of an event item type might happen, too, but I'm not sure where we are with that, especially since events are very rarely cited, so I wouldn't bet on it happening with the next update - though it could.
    More specialized fields like "CFP date" or so are definitely not going to happen.
    Generally, while it's great when Zotero is useful beyond organizing, citing, and annotating references, that's its core functionality and additional features will be mostly oriented to serve that goal.
  • Laura Akerman
    Thanks for the quick reply. Looking forward to the next version.
  • bdarcus
    Purpose would be to include information on conferences (future and past) in a group site being built around a common interest. This would make Zotero more useful, enabling people to see what's coming up - and after the conference is over, there would still be an entry for the conference, to which the published proceedings, or individual presentations/powerpoints could be related.
    I tend to think much of this might be better handled by dedicated conference scheduling services, but which might include links to/from Zotero items (say conference papers)?

    Lanyrd is one sort of conference service I've seen, but maybe not ideal.
  • Laura Akerman
    Nice to know about Lanyrd... it's a possibility, but I hate the idea of sending people to different places. I think it would be more helpful for this group if we could just use the Zotero group library to point to the conference website, and keep everything in one place. We're trying to make it sort of a "go to place" for information resources.

    How would I link a Zotero conference paper to a Lanyrd event?
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited March 15, 2012
    In the late 1990s it became a not uncommon practice to publish a conferences book of abstracts or the complete proceedings online or on a CD-ROM. A few years later I began seeing conference proceedings published on CD-ROM with a run-time version of Reference Manager. More recently groups are publishing proceedings (or abstracts) as journal supplements or on the association website with ways to download the metadata (RIS, BibTeX) for each presentation. If you are publishing in-house you could embed the metadata for each item and make it available to Zotero. The Zotero records (type: conference paper) could include the URL for each presentation making the documents a click away.

    In almost every case the conference materials were available well-before the meeting to allow attendees to use the information to plan the sessions they will attend.
  • bdarcus
    edited March 15, 2012
    How would I link a Zotero conference paper to a Lanyrd event?
    Just as a general rule, paste the link in an event description like this https://www.zotero.org/bdarcus/items/itemKey/GIAJZHNS
  • Laura Akerman
    @bdarcus: not a very linked-data-y way... :-) really I was looking for how to link FROM Zotero TO... anything else besides a URL for the item being described. Same thing, I guess - paste it into the abstract or something.

    @DWL-SDCA: The fact that conference materials appear only after a conference is over, is one more argument (for me) for having a date-sortable event in Zotero - we can then re-check ones that are coming up or have already occurred and see if more goodies are available on the conference site, snag the ones we want and link them.

    People looking for things may not know the actual title of the paper or remember the author's name, but would remember "that presentation about fishing and crime" from the 2011 Annual Task Force Conference.. Yes, it's possible to bookmark the event site somewhere else and do that, but it would really be more convenient to just have them in Zotero
Sign In or Register to comment.