Create additional notes field?

mjhill02
Is there anyway in Zotero to create a second "notes" field? I would like to create one field for my general reading notes (hypotheses, main arguments, results, etc.) and another field for a smaller group of citeable notes that I can cluster and organize by themes. In the current configuration, with only one notes field, these two types of data (reading notes and citeable notes) become intermingled. Is there anyway to create two separate notes streams in Zotero that I can print out as separate streams? Thanks for any suggestions on this.
  • poirmw
    Is it not as simple as pressing the Note tab a second, third, etc. time? It appears to me that it is. Try it and see if if does what you want it to do.
  • adamsmith
    and if you need to distinguish different types of notes as it sounds like you want to, use tags.
  • mjhill02
    Thanks poirmw and adam for the suggestions. I think I could distinguish different type of notes as Adam suggest by using tags. What I would like to do ultimately is to create a field for all of the contents (books, journals, etc.) of a given folder that gives me a report/print out that looks like the following:

    Author #1(Year)
    Citeable Note #1
    Citeable Note #2
    Citeable Note #3

    Author #2 (Year)
    Citeable Note #1
    Citeable Note #2

    Author #3 (Year)
    Citeable Note #1
    Citeable Note #2
    Citeable Note #3

    etc. etc.

    Is there any way of creating a report for all of the items in a folder that would just return the top line information that I have indicated above?

    Thanks again for the suggestions.

    MJH
  • adamsmith
    I don't think that's possible, no.
  • themooch42
    Hi, I know it's been a few years but I figured out a way that might make this kind of citeable note report in a way the reflects Peg Single's note-taking system (general notes + citeable notes). Here's how:

    For a source, I create two child notes: one titled "my notes" and the other "citeable notes"

    Then I go and tag the each of these child notes with their corresponding tag (so I've got a Tag also called "citable notes").

    I copy/paste the author + year tag at the start of each line (i.e. Author, 2017 This is my note), then type in my citeable notes, one per line.

    To generate the kind of report like MJH asks for, I created a saved advanced search following the guidelines here for tags and advanced searches https://www.zotero.org/support/reports#organizing_notes_into_outlines

    Then all I need to do is right-click on my saved search for "citable notes" and select “Generate Report from Saved Search…” The report looks like what I'm after and what, I suspect, MJH was going for. Hope this helps others trying to corral lots of material for big research projects.
  • josuemarleon
    Also been a couple of years, but wanted to say thank you!
    To make it easier for anyone who finds themselves with this question in later on, here's a quick list of steps to follow to get it working:

    - When creating your citeable notes, do so in a separate notes file, adding a citeable note on each line. On the tags section, write citeable-notes.

    - Use Edit > Advanced Search, choose the library you want, and in Match All of the following choose: Item Type is Note + Tag is citeable-notes.

    - Save the Search as Citeable Notes.

    - Under My Library is the Citeable Notes saved search. Right click > Generate Report from Saved Search. Click and you're done!
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