Creating an Annotated Bibliography

Scotthertzberg
Hello. Is it still not possible to easily create an annotated bibliography with Zotero? I read some threads from several years ago where people were have trouble with this. A few people find some ways around the problem. I'm not sure that those options from around 2010 still work.

As a librarian, the main think I do is create annotated bibliographies. I could import an RIS from Zotero into Endnote but I already know that bibliographic data is lost when I do that. Dates and other important info don't find their way into Endnote to export an annotated bibliography. I like everything else about Zotero more than Endnote. Boy, it would be good to create an annotated bib. from Zotero. Maybe I'm missing something. Thanks for any help.
  • adamsmith
    I guess I'm wondering what "Creating an Annotated Bibliography from Zotero" would involve exactly. I obviously know what an annotated bibliography is, but it's much less clear to me what the expectation is that Zotero do.

    It _is_ possible to generate bibliographies that include the abstract field and/or the Extra field.
  • Scotthertzberg
    Thanks Adam for the quick reply. I think Endnote would use the term export for what I want to do. I mean when you highlight an item(s) and right click and near the bottom of the menu you get an option to "create a bibliography."

    When I select "create a bibliography from item(s)", I see major citation styles but no option to create (export) the items in a citation style with abstracts. Can I do this by managing the citation styles.

    Thanks again for your quick response. Best, Scott
  • bwiernik
    This is controlled by the citation style you use. What exactly do you want the export to look like? Please be specific.
  • adamsmith
    We have APA style with abstracts and Chicago Manual with Extra available:
    https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=annot
  • Scotthertzberg
    Excellent, APA with abstracts is perfect. Thanks.
  • Scotthertzberg
    Is the documentation for installing additional styles for the old version of Zotero and not Zotero 5.0 ? I'm trying to be independent but can't follow the screenshots in the documentation. I know that some of the documentation has not yet been changed to by sync with Zotero 5.0.

    https://www.zotero.org/support/preferences/cite
  • adamsmith
    As long as you have the Zotero connector for your current browser installed, all you need to to is click the style.
  • Scotthertzberg
    Thanks I will try that with Chrome which has the Connector.
  • Scotthertzberg
    Thanks to both of you, I have done it. I have installed APA with abstracts.
  • denlinkd
    For anyone who comes along after this, I've written this up on my guide: http://guides.zsr.wfu.edu/zotero/annotated-bib
  • netbuoy
    I am familiar with the Report feature and with Jason's Report cleaner, but with all the Professors demanding that students prepare "annotated bibliographies" (https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/03/ -- I am not talking about bibliographies with abstracts) I am wondering if zotero could not be tweaked so as to include some, all, or a selection of Notes in creating a bibliography, as this would only require reading an additional flag from the drop down, and then as required selected additional fields in formatting output. Or would this be more appropriately treated (because of what has been done already) as an additional custom style to add the Note for each base style? If the latter how would the style reference the note?

    There is a source of confusion in the discussion (Note could reference foot or end note, as opposed to user notes added under the tabbed Notes...
  • bwiernik
    The idea with the APA (annotated bibliography) style is that you would replace the publisher abstract with your annotations. The style could be easily modified to use the Extra field instead of Abstract if you would prefer—I can walk you through that change. The Notes you can add in the Notes tab in Zotero aren’t accessible to the citation processor and can’t be used in styles.

    (@adamsmith CSL note seems like a much better field to use for this anyway. Would you be opposed to changing it?)
  • netbuoy
    @bwiernik: aha! I was able to use the CMOS with anno, and put an annotation in Extra. The only problem is that the annotation is formatted like an entry and I think the annotation should not come out to the margin,
    Parkinson, Robert G. “Print, the Press, and the American Revolution,”
    August 3, 2015. http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/.....

    This is my annotation, and I will stick by it through thick and thin. Sometimes
    that will work, and sometimes, well, it won't.

    but it is a move in the right direction. But, how does one find anything using the style editor without a find function? I was trying to reverse engineer the style file and could not locate where Extra is referenced.
  • adamsmith
    This looks right to me. I think it's as good as we can do this for style that indent after the first lines.

    As for finding something -- it really depends. For one, you'd need to know how the Zotero field is referenced, which is "note" not "Extra" (see a full list here): aurimasv.github.io/z2csl/typeMap.xml

    Then it's really a question of how you want to work. Working with the code, you can in fact use ctrl+f/cmd+f to find things. Working with the visual editor you can usually click on elements of the citation to find them, though there's no example of a citation with somethin in note/Extra in the visual editor, so that's of little help.

    Btw. Keith Stanger has a whole list of styles with annotated bibliographies in Extra:
    http://guides.emich.edu/c.php?g=188045&p=1241422
  • netbuoy
    SUPER, @adamsmith !

    I pulled Keith's APA6th annotated, and then changed display for note from block to right-inline and got exactly what I needed.
    <text variable="note" display="right-inline"/>

    I noticed that some of the styles provide a complete title on hover and some, like Keith's, don't appear to exhibit that behavior. What is onHover reading from the one file that its not apparently reading from Keith's file?

    Lastly, as I understand it, there is no way to display Zotero Notes. What about Tags and Related?
  • adamsmith
    on hover where? The difference between zotero.org/styles and Keith's page is the page itself, not the style.

    And no, no tags&related either.
  • netbuoy
    Sorry... when in zotero when you go to select a style when you re creating a bibliography, when you hover over a stye it will show the complete name... Just figured it out.... it only does that when the name is truncated because the dialog box is too small to accommodate the entire name.....

    Yes, I understand diff twixt Keith's page and Zotero/styles (and I sent him some comments on the instructions for adding styles in Zotero standalone).

    Thanks again.
Sign In or Register to comment.