Upgrade StorageActual events in Zotero Timeline
An earlier thread brought up the point that it would be much more useful to display actual events, instead of publications, in a Zotero timeline.
1. Add each event as a "document," putting the date of the event as Date, short description of the event (4-5 words) as Title, longer description as Abstract, and participants as Contributors
2. Add tags: "event" and "subject," where "subject" is your timeline's theme
3. Use Related tab to link relevant sources and notes
4. Create a saved search: tag=event & tag=subject; select that saved search
5. Select "Create Timeline" from the Actions menu
Here is an example of such a timeline.
Several modifications would make this feature even more useful:
1. Add Event item type with appropriate fields, including End Date and Place
2. Currently the timeline displays only the first few worlds of the title. It would be great if on rollover Zotero displayed the entire title, the date, and abstract text
3. Currently the Filter and Highlight features only work on Title. It would be nice if they searched Abstract and tags also (and eventually Place).
4. The three "bands" of the timeline still seem a bit buggy to me--I can hardly see the lowest one and it's difficult to select it.
Still, after some hacking, Timeline becomes a great research tool, another reason to think of Zotero as much more than a citation manager.
It looks like it is possible to create real timelines, with some hacking of the Document item type. Here are the steps:I know that Zotero is supposedly integrated with SIMILE Timeline, but a chronology by publication date does me very little good and I haven't had the time to invest in figuring out how to really make Timeline work for me.
1. Add each event as a "document," putting the date of the event as Date, short description of the event (4-5 words) as Title, longer description as Abstract, and participants as Contributors
2. Add tags: "event" and "subject," where "subject" is your timeline's theme
3. Use Related tab to link relevant sources and notes
4. Create a saved search: tag=event & tag=subject; select that saved search
5. Select "Create Timeline" from the Actions menu
Here is an example of such a timeline.
Several modifications would make this feature even more useful:
1. Add Event item type with appropriate fields, including End Date and Place
2. Currently the timeline displays only the first few worlds of the title. It would be great if on rollover Zotero displayed the entire title, the date, and abstract text
3. Currently the Filter and Highlight features only work on Title. It would be nice if they searched Abstract and tags also (and eventually Place).
4. The three "bands" of the timeline still seem a bit buggy to me--I can hardly see the lowest one and it's difficult to select it.
Still, after some hacking, Timeline becomes a great research tool, another reason to think of Zotero as much more than a citation manager.
Question about Timeline: if, as Erazlogo ask, we can have 2 different dates for the same event (one for the "start" of an event, one other for the "end"), can Timeline "draw" a line between these 2 dates as we see in some chronology?
Thanks
Also, I'd like to be able to organize my notes (and thoughts) like old fashioned notecards that could be switched around irrespective of source, yet still have the source and page jotted down in a corner for when the time finally comes to cite them. Instead I find I have to try to remember in which of a multitude of sources I saw that one relevent line... I was thrilled when I found Scribe. Unfortunately, I only discovered itright before getting a new computer with VISTA and have not been able to get to work since. If I remember correctly, Scribe allowed you to link notes and sources of course, but visualize and organize them separately. Is there a way to do that with Zotero has escaped me thus far?
Thanks for all your hard work,
This would be so so helpful for the huamnities.