Edited Volume - Best Practice

IsaakM · January 12, 2017

I want to cite different chapters, written by different authors, from the same edited volume (in German: "Sammelwerk"). In Zotero I could only import the book as a whole with the name of the editor, but I have no references for the single chapters. What would be the best approach of handling this, when I already have the entry for the whole book?

adamsmith · January 12, 2017

https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/edited_volumes_and_book_chapters
you'd add them all separately. You can connect them via the related tab, but that's just for convenience and won't affect citations.

IsaakM · January 12, 2017

Okay, thanks. But currently there is no way to automatically use the information from the parent book (the edited volume) for the single chapters that I relate to the book? "Book Sections" and the parent "Book" share a lot of common fields, that's why it would be great to just use the existing information.

Another suggestion: it would be great if one could place the related "Book Sections" inside of the parent "Book" (just like with full text pdfs) for a better overview. If I have 30+ items in a collection and the various "Book Sections" are all over the place, it gets messy very easily.

Thanks

adamsmith · January 12, 2017

right-click --> Duplicate item, then convert to books section and at missing info.

Yes, grouping book sections with the volume has long been requested and is theoretically still on the map, but it turns out to be very complicated under the hood so I wouldn't expect that any time soon.

bwiernik · January 12, 2017

The Zutilo plugin has a shortcut to do the steps @adamsmith says in one click. It also relates the two items together so you can jump quickly between them.

IsaakM · January 12, 2017

Thanks bwiernik, but I really want to avoid installing additional plugins / addons that could potentially cause additional problems. I just wish Zotero could do this by itself. I wonder why it could be so challenging to implement the grouping of related "Book Sections" under one parent "Book" entry, but of course I have no insight into the process.

adamsmith · January 12, 2017

you really do want to use add-ons with Zotero. Extensibility is at the core of how it is envisioned and you're robbing yourself of a lot of options if you don't take advantage of that.

IsaakM · January 12, 2017

@adamsmith Obviously I'm using the Zotero browser add-on (Firefox) and a plugin for my text processor (Word), but it's news to me that Zotero requires any additional add-ons (apart from the ones I mentioned) to function properly. Which additional add-ons are required?

adamsmith · January 12, 2017

there's nothing "required" obviously, but both Zutilo and ZotFile add really cool functionality that I wouldn't want to do without -- and Zotero hasn't pushed as much on their development because the add-ons exist.