Libraries with multiple book storage areas

rmatz · July 10, 2012

When Zotero prints a report, it provides the library catalog and call number, but not different physcial locations where books are stored. At George Mason, a book might be at Fenwick or the Johnson Center, etc. As far as I know, I need to look up each book and manually add the physical location. I'm sure I could do this manual add when I capture the reference, but usually my head is into the project, not manipulating the data. So that leaves me having to do it later.

Is there anyway that Zotero can recognize the library data that says where something is stored physically? If this cannot be done generally, can I set up Zotero to do it for the particular situation, e.g. viz. the Mason catalog's listing of Fenwick, Johnson Center, etc.

Thanks, Robert Matz

adamsmith · July 10, 2012

that type of data is not in the catalog data (MARC) that Zotero uses to generate items (or at least not in a standardized way).
Since Zotero uses generic translators for library catalog - there is no way we could have a different translator for every University library in the US let alone the world - that means it can't be imported.
You could probably hack a GMU translator based on Voyager, but you'd be on your own for that.

rmatz · July 11, 2012

Sure, I understand that there's no standard MARC data field for this info, but what I don't know is whether I could "hack" Zotero just for Mason. In other words, could an amateur quite comfortable with computers but no programming/back end skills to speak of still do this in a couple of hours, if pointed in the right direction, or is this hopeless for me?

If the former, could you point me in the right direction?

adamsmith · July 11, 2012

to be honest, if you've never coded javascript, it would probably take at least a day and a lot of help - part of the problem is that you'd just need some time to get the hang of translator coding in general, but the bigger issue is that library catalog translators are the most complicated pieces of translator, so they're a terrible place to start.

If you want to give it a try, first you want to install Scaffold and probably Firebug and read through this:
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/translators/coding

Then, the general approach would either be to use ZU.xpathText to get the book locations from the item display, store them as a variable and later add them as notes or to the call number field or to see if the locations are in the GMU version of marc and to get them from there.
The former is likely easier, but it's less stable and might not work with getting items from search results. If you go this route I'll be happy to try to answer some specific questions, but I won't be able to talk you through a lot of basic issues - it's simply too time consuming.