photo or image library item

slimandslam · February 23, 2012

I was kind of shocked that Zotero doesn't have a library item called "photo" or "image". The closest thing I see in the menu is "artwork". Is there something I'm missing here? Surely people must have photos or other images that they need to add as citations (?)

J

mronkko · February 24, 2012

Is there a problem in citing photos as artworks? How would citing a proto differ?

slimandslam · February 24, 2012

For one thing, "artwork" is not always going to be the correct designation for a photo. I have a photo done by a journalist from the 1940's. Calling it artwork is quite a stretch. Note that there are lots of types of library items in Zotero, so it seems that it wouldn't take much to simply add a selection called "photo". I would think that another common class of library item could be called "table or diagram". Often, things like photos, tables, or diagrams are simply attachments to other citations, but sometimes they are going to be the cited work.

adamsmith · February 24, 2012

slimandslam - there are arguably too many item types in Zotero already. Read the beginning of this thread
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/15636/4/changes-to-fields-and-item-types-for-zotero-31-/
for some discussion about what we consider in adding new item types and why there is generally a reluctance to do so.
The short version is: More item types make citation styles and data export/import much more difficult. As a rough rule, we will introduce new item types only if they're needed to provide correct citations. Organizational concerns can be handled with tags and/or collections.

ebuchary · November 6, 2017

I also found 'Artwork' to be inappropriate to cite photos. I have a portfolio of photographs for my specific topic of my research (fisheries) since 2002, as I am following it to see the trend of how the fisheries evolve and see whether they fit my model predictions.

I chose some of these photos for a Photo Essay that I presented in a conference, and would like to cite it in a paper. But I found that Artwork category doesn't go well (as they are not artwork per se), so for now, I chose 'Presentation' but put 'Photo Essay' in the 'Type' field.