Suitable Item Type for dramatic works?

I am new to zotero. At first blush, it looks good. I am only unsure which Item Type is appropriate for dramatic works (e.g. plays).

Often, dramatic works are published in a collection or anthology. E.g. Middleton, Thomas. Five Plays. Ed. Bryan Loughrey & Neil Taylor. Penguin, 1988.

Obviously, we can enter this as a Book. So far so good.

But what about the individual plays in the collection? Entering them as a Book Section seems logical, but if you cite this with MLA style the play appears in quote marks: i.e. "I warrant you, my life for yours" ("The Revenger's Tragedy", 5.1.2).

While the title in quote marks is correct for essays, poems, etc. in a collection or anthology, it is incorrect for dramatic works. Instead, the name of the play should be in italics. I.e. "I warrant you, my life for yours" (The Revenger's Tragedy, 5.1.2).

Likewise, the bibliographic entry should have the title of the play in italics, rather than quote marks, i.e. Middleton, Thomas. The Revenger's Tragedy. Five Plays. Ed. Bryan Loughrey & Neil Taylor. Penguin, 1988. 71-160. and not Middleton, Thomas. "The Revenger's Tragedy." Five Plays. Ed. Bryan Loughrey & Neil Taylor. Penguin, 1988. 71-160.

This becomes especially problematic when citing Shakespeare's plays. These are typically cited with certain MLA-standard abbreviations, such as Ham., Mac., Oth., AYL etc.. Clearly, the Short Title field is appropriate here, but these abbreviations also must appear in italics, not quote marks. ("Ham.", 2.1.1 looks really wrong...)

Does anyone know how to do this, or do we need a new Item Type for dramatic works?
  • Has there been any progress on this issue? I can italicize using tags, but is there any way to remove the quotation marks?
  • No, there currently no good way to do that (or, for that matter, any citation with two parts in italics). We're aware of this, but changing & adding item types is more complex than it may seem, which is why it takes so long.
  • Just reiterating that this fix would be very much appreciated...
  • It is part of the plan for Zotero 4.2, which will happen as soon as the (massive) changes to the underlying sync architecture of the program are finished. It is anticipated this year.
  • Great news. Thank you!
  • (though I can't promise this will make it into the first round of field revisions - it's quite complex to get this right. But one of the big advantages of the changes under the hood is that future field and item type updates will be easier to make and won't take multiple years.)
  • edited May 11, 2014
    Yay! This type of layering of sources comes up a ton in performance stuff, incidentally (I'm currently trying to figure out the best way of entering a video recording of a live performance, so that elements of the citation appear in vaguely the right order.... Entering as Artwork is my current stab at it?) Anyway, if these changes under the hood make it easier to build variations on citation types, that's fantastic news for those of us with consistently weird citation types—whenever they roll out. Thanks again!
  • Can I suggest that you look at using Marc21 fields (http://www.loc.gov/marc/)? From my reading of the Marc21 documentation (http://www.loc.gov/marc/relators/relaterm.html) the information required is present.
  • We're obviously familiar with MARC (that's what we use to import from library catalogs most of the time). But if you look at the amount of relator fields, that way too much to include, it's just not feasible for a reference manager (especially not one that wants to remain manageable for regular users).
    The other thing is that missing information isn't actually the problem in this case (though it is in others). It's that we need to be able to distinguish between an article in a book (which is currently what book section assumes) and a complete work (like a drama or a classic text) included in a book. I'm not even sure that MARC makes that distinction, since while it matters for citations, it doesn't matter for cataloging.
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