Auto-select book for book section

femrich
I frequently must use "book section" entries to add citations from particular chapters of edited books. More often than not, I cite more than one (but not all) chapters from a particular work, and it is essential to identify the particular chapters both with the particular author and the particular edited volume.

As far as I can tell, the book information must be entered individually each time a book section is entered, regardless of whether another section from the same book has already been entered or not.

It seems it should be possible to set the book field so that it generates a dropdown of titles in the database with titles matching the text typed in that field, allowing the user to select the edited volume to which to link the book section, rather than entering the individual book information every time a section is added.

Is this possible? And might this feature be added? Or is there another way to achieve this I have not been able to find?

Thank you
  • bwiernik
    The creator of the Zutilo plugin is currently working on adding a "Create Chapter from Book" function that will accomplish most of what you want here.
  • adamsmith
    Right, but the way to do this for now would be to duplicate the book (right-click --> duplicate item) and then change its item type for book section and enter the info particular to the chapter.

    That's essentially 3-4 clicks and I understand why Will (of Zutilo) wants to make this even easier, but it's still not currently the case that you have to input the book info manually.
  • arggem
    Note that when you change the Item Type to Book Section, the Title automatically gets transferred to Book Title.

    For added convenience, I personally relate the book with the chapter. (Clicking on the Book and Related Items gives you a list of all the chapters.)

    For additional chapters I duplicate the chapter item, not the original book. That saves a number of clicks (no need to change item type, nor click to add author, change editor to author, etc). That streamlines the procedure substantially.
  • femrich
    Thanks. I'll try the solution you've outlined, which I had not found in my searching. Will also watch for the plugin.
  • skenworthy
    edited December 11, 2014
    I am in the same Situation as femrich outlines. One problem with the solution outlined above is that the "Book Section" only has an entry for the author of the article, but not for the Editor of the book. So when you duplicate the book entry and change it to Book Section, you still have the book author, though in most instances this is not the same as the article author. Once you change the author for the article, there's no way I see to indicate the Editor of the book.
  • arggem
    Click on the triangle next to "Author" and change it to editor. Then, click on the "+" sign at the end of the line to add author(s).
  • femrich
    arggem, next to the author field on the left side (I believe) there is a dropdown what will allow you to change "author" to "editor". On the right side is a plus button (for adding and additional field) which would allow you to have multiple combinations of author(s) and editor(s). (You can also use the minus button to remove a field, if necessary.) Hope this helps.
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