Multiple bibliographies

DaniOrama
Hello everyone, I tried to add multiple bibliographies (in different book sections) with OpenOffice but it doesn't seem to work... anyone tried it?

I know that's not so big problem, because I could divide a book into different .odt files, and later merge them. The bibliographies and citations don't change until I refresh, but my editor would have nightmares if something changes at the end...

Multiple bibliographies is really useful in technical books for universities so I think it could be a nice feature if there is no solution yet.

Thanks
«13
  • bdarcus
    I agree this would be a nice feature, but I'm not sure exactly how one would do it from a UI and programming standpoint. Say you have inserted multiple bibliographies, for example. How would the macro code know what citation apply to what bibliographies?

    I'd almost want to say that if you have different chapters, each should have its own file and associated bibliography, but be assembled together via master documents. If one wanted only a single bibliography for the entire book, then it should be inserted in the master document perhaps.

    WRT to:
    I know that's not so big problem, because I could divide a book into different .odt files, and later merge them. The bibliographies and citations don't change until I refresh, but my editor would have nightmares if something changes at the end...
    ... this I'm not following. How is what you propose any worse than what I propose? More importantly, why is it a problem to have mutiple files?
  • DaniOrama
    Hello bdarcus, it's not worse, it's the same :D
    The problem about multiple files seems a small one, until you are working with 3-5 books at the same time, you edit the books with different people, or as usual when something goes "wrong" merging.

    Changing just a bibliography would destroy the whole work, and when you have multiple revisions and files it's a nightmare to change that.

    Also having a whole file help getting a "real" view about the "whole" book, and that's really important to create a nice structured and balanced one. There are so many examples in scientist world about good researchers but poor writers with a "poorer" sense of structure.

    A solution could be associate bibliographies to sections, as the page numbers. If it's easy to program or not, I really don't know...
  • sybille
    A solution could be associate bibliographies to sections, as the page numbers. If it's easy to program or not, I really don't know...
    Instead of sections, it would make more sense to associate the bibliographies to sub documents in a master document.

    For more information about using master documents in OOo, you can check out Chapter 13 of the OOoAuthors' Writer Guide: http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors2/index.html
  • Thomas_W
    There is at least one more reason for multiple bibliographies. In technical and environmental reports and expertises it's a growing common practice to mark the different "qualities" of the used sources. This are e.g.:
    + laws, specifications, book, journals and maps are public available
    + reports, expertises, posts, emails and fax owned by the investor or the consulting engineers and are revisable but not public available because they may contain business secrets
    + not revisable sources as telephone calls, interviews, personal observations

    The labeling is done either by splitting the bibliography in several parts with different caption but serial numbering or by the use of different marks e.g. A1, A2, ... for specifications and journals, B1, B2, ... for reports and posts and C1, C2, ... for telephone calls and interviews.
  • hs
    Let me pitch in too. I am not familiar with Zotero development neither with its source so forgive me if I lack details below.

    Having multiple bibliographies is not a rare situation. It is quite common to find situation as the OP described here. It is also common to see two sections listing some references. One is usually called References with list of citations in the text, and the other is Bibliography, with a list of recommended reading but not cited in the text.

    In any case, having a multiple bibliography feature is, IMHO, a must for any bib. manager which is expected to be powerful.

    Perhaps latex's Natbib can be studied to see how to implement it. In that, we just create as many bibliographies as we want. Each bibliography is accompanied with its own unique cite command (e.g. \cite is for regular references, \BibCite can be for another bibliography, etc.). This way the actual cite command used tells the bibliography where a citation belongs in the document.

    Perhaps we can have something similar in Zotero. Something like, for each document:
    1. have a default bibliography, perhaps named Bibliography.
    2. have an option of creating new bibliographyies within that doc.
    3. Each new bibliography is given a unique name, e.g. BibChap1, BibChap2, etc.
    4. Each bibliography is accompanied with a cite command for itself.
    5. While citing, a user picks a bibliography item and also must choose the bibliography in which that citation belongs.
    6. When the lists of bibliographies are created, creation of each list involves specifying which bibliography is to be created (BibChap1 or BibChap2 or any other).

    This way, one can create BibChap1, Bibchap2 and others along with the default bib where ever one wants in the document.

    ->HS
  • bdarcus
    @HS: that's probably reasonable (and simple to extend for other, more complex, cases, such as multiple sub-bibliographies). The one quibble I would have is with this:
    4. Each bibliography is accompanied with a cite command for itself.
    There's no point at all in blindly copying natbib here; rather than have separate commands, you just have an optional parameter.
  • hs
    Hi bdarcus,

    I understand what you mean about having a cite command for each biblio. Yes, a variable should also work. All that is needed is to identify which bibliography a particular citation belongs.

    I do not know how XML works, but using a unique command for each biblio. might be unnecessary hard work and a variable, as you suggested, might be more sensible to work with.

    Regards.
  • MSwales
    First Post for me.. Has this feature been implimented as it would be very useful for our Humanities students who have to seperate ( as I understand it ) their published printed works and Web sources seperately.
    Where might I find an instruction on how to do it?
    thank you.
  • konstantinos_29
    Yes, please let us know if and (if yes) when it is going to be implemented.
  • fbennett
    For legal support, we're going to need selective bibliographies. There are styles that require a table of cases and a table of statutes only, with no bibliography for references to secondary material. For this use case, the item type can be used to determine what goes where, if the bib can be divided into subsections. Will be nice when this is implemented.
  • konstantinos_29
    I have done some research. Currently only Endnote (and its two little brother applications) support "subject bibliographies"... You can look in its manual to see how it was implemented.
    Please allow me to repeat, how important this feature is.
    I am currently writing a handbook for students and the bibliography is very extensive and has to be divided in subjects.
  • simifilm
    I have done some research. Currently only Endnote (and its two little brother applications) support "subject bibliographies"... You can look in its manual to see how it was implemented.
    AFAICS Endnote only supports multiple bibliographies based on the content of your bibliographic entries, for example it can group the bibliographies by keywords or authors or document types. While this is better than nothing, an ad-hoc solution where you can chose while writing is much more powerful and quite important in my field. In humanities you often deal with primary and secondary sources, but what role a certain doucment has can vary from text to text. So havin to possibility to designate a specific bibliography while writing is essential.

    As has been already noted, this can be done easily with BibTeX/LaTeX. Packages like multibib or biblatex provide rich support for this, and the mechanism is always the same: You define specific citation commands for each bibliography. As bdarcus has noted this could be easily done with a variable Zotero, but it's definitely something which is important for many fields.
  • konstantinos_29
    edited January 19, 2009
    After reading again all above comments I think that we should sum it up in a few words. There is dire need for the following two new features in Zotero:

    1. Multiple bibliographies, as described by simifilm and hs above. e.g. a bibliography for primary sources and another one for secondary sources.

    2. Subject bibliographies, such as those in Endnote, only better :)
    It would be something like this:
    1st section title (=collection or subcollection name in the Zotero bibliography)
    book1
    book2
    ...
    2nd section title (=collection or subcollection name in the Zotero bibliography)
    book3
    book4
    ...

    I think that both features are relatively easy to implement and that they would become a very strong point in favor of Zotero.

    P.S. If someone knows a workaround for the realisation of the above described Subject Bibliographies (other than using chapters/master document, or dividing the document in sections) please let me know.
  • bdarcus
    @orpheus49: I'm afraid it's a little more complicated.

    First, primary and secondary are not the only ways that bibliographies get chopped up based on the characteristics of the sources. I've seen sections for legal cases, for example, or newspaper articles, or I could even imagine music or film.

    There's another use case that could fit into this subsectional grouping requirement, and that is recent discussions around some anthropology styles that effectively group by author, where each group has the author name as heading (of sorts).

    The other complication is that any solution here has to be implemented in CSL, and CSL is by design not specific to Zotero. It's also designed to be internationalized. So any solution has to take this into account.
  • konstantinos_29
    @bdarcus: Thanks for your reply. I now see that it is more complicated than I thought.

    But what about the "Subject Bibliography", as described above? There is only one single bibliography at the end of the document, but divided according to the collections and subcollections in Zotero and alphabetically sorted in each section.

    1st section title (=collection/subcollection in Zotero)
    bdarcus, title, 1999
    ddarcus, title, 1998
    ...

    2nd section title (=collection/subcollection in Zotero)
    edarcus, title, 1998
    fdarcus, title, 2001
    ...

    Is it possible to implement something like this in CSL? It would be really great!
  • bdarcus
    There is only one single bibliography at the end of the document, but divided according to the collections and subcollections in Zotero and alphabetically sorted in each section.
    That's an interesting idea, but how do you specify the order of the subsections?
  • konstantinos_29
    I would say, simply alphabetically.
    Because then the user can designate numbers to his collections and subcollections (in Firefox) and have them sorted in the right order later in his Document.
    e.g.
    I. Bronze Age
    I.1. Palaces
    I.2. Sailing
    ...
    II. Iron Age
    II.1. Something
    ...

    or

    I a
    I b
    II a
    II b
    ...

    Is there a way to do this with CSL?
  • bdarcus
    edited January 19, 2009
    I don't think that's the best approach, since it forces users to change the titles of collections, based on the particular document in question.

    Perhaps a better way is just to have a little UI that allows users to set the following for each bibliography subsection:

    1. position

    2. heading title

    3. requisite Zotero collection(s)

    The CSL might then be something so simple as ...


    <bibliography>
    <option name="subsection-group-by" value="collection"/>
    </bibliography>

    Note: I may ATM be overlooking how complicated this might need to be in practice. For example, this doesn't allow special configuration of the headings. It also doesn't allow mixing of grouping categories.

    Hmm ... might be possible to even leave CSL out of this
  • konstantinos_29
    @bdarcus: This is a great idea!

    I copied your code in my csl file, but nothing happened.

    Is there a way to use the value="collection" now or do we have to wait until someone implements this UI?
  • adamsmith
    orpheus - no this has not been implented yet that was just Bruce thinking out loud on how an implementation would look. You'll have to wait for now.
  • konstantinos_29
    edited January 19, 2009
    @adam.smith: Thanks for letting me know. Do you think that it would take a very long time?
  • konstantinos_29
    My guess is, that this implementation is going to take some time.

    So until then, is there a way to have Subject Bibliographies?
    Would it be possible (as a temporary solution) to use the names of the collections/subcollections in Zotero as titles for the various sections of the Bibliography in the document?

    Can we use the above code of bdarcus (i.e. <option name="subsection-group-by" value="collection"/>) and feed it with the collection/subcollection names?
  • adamsmith
    @orpheus - no idea. I don't/can't write code. I just have a pretty good sense of how Zotero works and so I answer questions where I can.
  • konstantinos_29
    edited January 20, 2009
    Maybe bdarcus knows how to do this?
    I am sorry for insisting on this, but it would make my work much much easier.
  • bdarcus
    I don't speak for Zotero, but I'd guess you won't see this soon.
  • konstantinos_29
    @bdarcus: Is it somehow possible in CSL to get the Collection/Subcollection names and put them in the value="collection" of your above code?
  • konstantinos_29
    edited January 20, 2009
    I had an idea about a temporary workaround, which I am going to try out later.

    I shall put bibliography section numbers (Ia, Ib... IIa, IIb...) in a field of my Zotero bibliography which I do not use (e.g. Rights). Then I am going to adapt the above code of bdarcus (<option name="subsection-group-by" value="collection"/>) and group the bibliography in subsections according to my section numbers. I hope that I can also insert Titles to my Subsections with <Label>.

    Since I am very new with CSL and XML this simple experiment is going to take me a couple of hours to try out. So if someone knows that it is not possible, please let me know in time.

    If it works, I am going to paste the code here, for future reference. Because I think that there are a lot of people who would like to use "Subject Bibliographies".
  • fbennett
    edited January 20, 2009
    @orpheus49: as adam.smith said above, the CSL code that Bruce floated is a thought experiment, an example of what the code for a working command for a subject bibliography might look like. If you insert it into a CSL file, it will either have no effect, or it will cause an error. You definitely won't get the output you are after.

    Handling the problem of bibliography subsections will require non-trivial modifications to the core code of Zotero. It's an important job, but it's also a non-trivial job, and the developers have a lot of issues on their plate at the moment. This functionality will not be available soon.

    In the meantime, you can cope with this need by exporting a bibliography and hand-editing it (we used to do that for everything in a document, after all!). You can then append it to your finished document, and you're golden. Zotero is a great time-saving tool, but it can't handle everything down to the last stitch.

    I'd recommend giving this problem a rest for the time being. A solution will certainly come, but like a lot of other things it's going to take some time and demand some patience.
  • konstantinos_29
    @fbennet: Thank you very much for your post, it saved me a lot of time.

    I guess I have to hand-edit my bibliography. Although it is going to be very time-consuming and error-prone, because I have about 1,500 entries which I have to use.

    I shall also give BibTex a try, although I find it is not so easy to work with it.
    Anyway, I am going to keep using Zotero, because I find it a really great application!
  • adamsmith
    @Orpheus - a lot of people combine bibtex/jabref and Zotero - you use Zotero to manage your database, keep notes, read in new literature and then export to bibtex and write in LaTeX.
    That really depends on your taste and needs, LaTeX has a steeper learning curve and - perhaps more importantly - will somewhat isolate you within the humanities and much of the social sciences, but it's an amazing piece of software.
Sign In or Register to comment.