Teaching using Zotero -- some requests

smargolinnyc
We are using Zotero in a one-credit library course that we are teaching. Two key goals are to facilitate collaboration/resource-sharing among our students and to get students comfortable with Zotero (and similar tools). Some issues:

- How can we use Zotero to create annotated bibliographies (that is, generate our bibliography in MLA format, but also include any Notes?

- Is there an easy way for us to review all entries within our group, student by student? Sorting by student has not proven accurate (not all of their entries will be grouped together).

Thanks for your help with either of these -- and apologies if they have already been answered elsewhere.
  • adamsmith
    edited April 21, 2014
    1. You can't use notes in bibliographies. You could consider using reports instead:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/reports
    Otherwise, you can put annotations in the "Extra" field - Keith Stanger maintains a couple of CSL styles for annotated bibs - including MLA - that use the Extra field for annotations:
    http://guides.emich.edu/content.php?pid=330314&sid=2716437

    2. I believe other people teaching with Zotero have asked students to tag their contributions and that seems the easiest way to go. Otherwise, you can sort by "added by" in the online version of the group - but not in the software.
    and apologies if they have already been answered elsewhere
    no, don't apologize - we really want people (including the students you teach) to feel like they can ask questions on the forum without spending hours searching.
  • alasdairdubh
    I'd like to add my support to this feature request. I've been trying to use Zotero in my research on rare books. I need a lot of copy-specific information as well as bibliographic info. Since Zotero seems not to scrape important notes from catalog records, I have to add those manually - and then I have to add them manually again if I want to creat a bibliography! To me it seems really odd that Zotero has a place to put important information about items, and then not have a way to incorporate it in one's work.
  • adamsmith
    If you start a new thread with details about missing information on import we may be able to do something about that.
    I don't think bibliographies with notes are going to happen very soon, so you're stuck with one of the two strategies I suggest above.
  • mferdinand
    Hi: I need to do annotated bibliographies in APA format. Does Zotero support this? Thanks.
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