How to enter archival material?

LWittern
While Zotero gives a lengthy list of source types, it does not include "archives" or "archival material." If I want to enter something like the papers of Alexander Bittelman at the Tamiment Library at NYU, what's the best way for me to do that? I would like it to format (based on CMOS) as:
Papers of Alexander Bittelman, Tamiment Library, New York University.

Also, is there some way that we could suggest to the wonderful Zotero designers that they include "archival material" as a source in future upgrades?
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  • adamsmith
    "Archival Material" is a needlessly broad category. Archives can hold maps, artwork, books, manuscripts, letters etc.
    Zotero has a category for each of these and fields for Archive and Location in Archive that allow you to include all information necessary. While not all citation styles fully support Archival citations, CMoS does.
  • LWittern
    I'm sorry but this reply does not help. My example above shows that I am trying to list someone's papers in an archive. There is no category that allows me to do that. What I am trying to add is not a document, nor is it a conference paper or any of the other categories available. Historians often use and need to list someone's papers in an archive. That's what I am suggesting as a category.
  • adamsmith
    remember that Zotero was developed by historians, so developers were and are aware of what historians do.
    Treat "papers" in an archive as "Mansucript" - which for bibliographical purposes they are: unpublished written works, the type of which you can specify in the "type" field. You can adapt that for whole collections (as in your example) or for individual items in a collection.

    For sorting and categorizing items in your database, you can use tags and collections.
  • LWittern
    Thank you for this. I do appreciate your help and I am not trying to be difficult, but entering an archival collection as a manuscript as you suggest causes the collection name to be encased in quotation marks, I'm sure because a manuscript is usually an unpublished single document. What I am trying to list is a collection of papers--not a whole work. For that I still see no alternative offered but to go back through the citation, remove the quotation marks and remove the "n.d." in order to get the citation correct. Am I correct in this assumption? Again, many thanks for your time and help.
  • adamsmith
    Do you have the Chicago manual at hand? Which section are you consulting on this? I can take a look. I'm pretty sure this can & should be handled on the style side, but it's possible that I'm wrong and we need to think about an archival collection type category.
  • LWittern
    Yes, I was able to find it from the Online version of CMOS. I've cut and pasted it below:

    14.241 Examples of bibliography entries for manuscript collections

    The style of the first six examples below is appropriate if more than one item from a collection is cited in the text or notes. In the second and third examples, commas are added after the initials to avoid misreading. See also 14.233.

    Egmont Manuscripts. Phillipps Collection. University of Georgia Library.
    House, Edward M., Papers. Yale University Library.
    Merriam, Charles E., Papers. University of Chicago Library.
    Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Papers. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
    Strother, French, and Edward Lowry. Undated correspondence. Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, IA.
    Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform. Papers. Alice Belin du Pont files, Pierre S. du Pont Papers. Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, Wilmington, DE.
  • adamsmith
    Thanks - will be a bit, I should be able to get you an answer in a week or so.
  • LWittern
    Thank you for being willing to look into this. I appreciate your time.
  • adamsmith
    sorry for taking so long to get back to you. You're correct, there is currently no good way of doing this.
    You can get around the quotation marks by putting the collection name into the type field and leaving the title empty. Since the title is often a description of the type of content that's not completely far-fetched, though I won't deny that it's a bit of a hack.

    I don't have anything on the date, though, (i.e. how to get rid of the n.d.) and I'm not quite sure how we can fix that. I'll see if I can find one of the historians to adivse.
  • adamsmith
    another update:
    I had forgotten about this, but archival collection has been requested a long time ago and chances are it will make it into Zotero
    https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/issues/27
  • LWittern
    Has there been any movement on adding "archival collection" to the categories? I have students working on research papers and I require them to use Zotero. I'd like to be able to tell them how to enter archival collections into their databases so they can properly cite their primary sources.
  • adamsmith
    no. We hope to get this into 4.2 (though no guarantees, given that this also requires CSL changes), but definitely not sooner.
  • LWittern
    Has there been any movement on trying to get a field added that will allow us to put something in as an archival collection? I asked this question four years ago and I am just wondering whether this issue was ever addressed?
  • bwiernik
    Updates to Zotero fields were waiting on necessary technical changes coming in Zotero 5.0 (currently in beta testing). Adding fields to many different items is planned for the next big update after 5.0 releases.
  • LWittern
    Thank you for the update on the updates!
  • katie.holt
    Another historian thanks you both for looking into this!
  • LWittern
    Sorry to keep beating this drum, but I am still not seeing this need addressed in the new Zotero 5.0.3.1.
    As someone who requires students to use Zotero--after touting all its many advantages--it's frustrating to have to tell them that archival collections have to be manually entered.
    Again, many thanks for all you're doing for us!
  • adamsmith
    As bwiernik says
    Adding fields to many different items is planned for the next big update after 5.0 releases.
    That would be 5.1 or 6.0 depending on the versioning. This isn't going to be possible before Zotero stops syncing all 4.0 versions, but I'd pretty firmly expect this to be happen during 2018.
  • rescogitans
    Yet another historian / musicologist here… While I, too, wait for an update (hopefully before I submit my dissertation!!), I just wanted to add that adamsmith's hack from Jan 2013 does not work with the 17th ed. of CMOS, but it does work with the 16th and with Turabian (8th ed.)!
  • bwiernik
    What exactly isn’t working?
  • rescogitans
    In CMOS 17 footnotes (but not bibliography), you get [Item] ([Item], [Date]), [Archive].

    E.g.
    Contrat de mariage entre Louis Denis et Marie Bellesme (Contrat de mariage entre Louis Denis et Marie Bellesme, January 20, 1666), Archives Nationales, Minutier Central, Étude XXVI/110.
  • nealev
    Any update on this? I've created a library entry for each archive I'm citing from but the constant 'n.d.' is a pain.
  • adamsmith
    sorry, status is still as of last December.
  • indigocrush
    Hi? Is there an update on this? Thanks.
  • EBoersma
    What is the status on this?
  • parhamj
    edited May 25, 2020
    Any movement on this? I'm surprised that this has not been addressed since 2012 when this thread was opened.
  • bwiernik
    There is very active development happening right now on both the CSL and Zotero fronts that will address item types and fields, including archival collection information.
  • parhamj
    What is a realistic timeframe for when the community can expect this functionality to be implemented?
  • federico.donofrio
    What's the situation now? How can I cite documents in a way so that the archive name and archival signature shows without any specific title, author, date, stuff?
  • adamsmith
    We're closer (a CSL with these a collection item type is about to be released) but nothing new as of now
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