Introducing ZoteroBib

dstillman
We're excited to announce ZoteroBib, a new, free service to help people quickly create bibliographies without installing any software or creating an account.

See our blog post for more details.

If you're a regular, happy Zotero user, ZoteroBib probably isn't of much use (though it's not a bad way to quickly build and share a one-off bibliography), but we're hoping it allows many more people to benefit from what the Zotero/CSL/citeproc-js community has built and spurs further improvements that benefit all Zotero users. We'll be bringing features and design work from ZoteroBib back to Zotero and the Zotero web interface soon, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you know someone who might need to create the occasional bibliography, let them know about ZoteroBib!
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  • steko
    This is amazing work on so many levels (the UI is fantastic). Thank you!

    I can't wait to see what will be backported to Zotero and Zotero web particularly.
  • luisiafa
    Hello,

    I'm really happy to know about this new feature of Zotero and especially anxious to see some of them aplied in Zotero Web.

    I was wondering if it's possible that you change ABNT styles in the same way that you did with APA style (Why are all the proper nouns in my entries in lowercase when I use APA style?) because it's the same case.

    Thanks for always bring new improvements.

    Best regards,
    Luisia
  • pedrom34
    Hi !

    Works great. Nice tool. Congrats!
    One issue though: can't make it work on Internet Explorer 11 - my company default browser.

    Is it something you're aware of?
  • SanDah
    Looks very useful so far. I think I'll recommend it especially to those of our students who start to think about easy ways to create bibliographies only when they have to hand in their papers the next day.

    I have one question about the conversion from title case to sentence case for APA ciations. I work at a German library and our patrons often need bibliographies with a mix of German and English titles. In Zotero Standalone I could switch to sentence case for citations on a case for case base, but with ZoteroBib it's always for the whole Bibliography. This leads to wrong citations for the German titles. Am I doing it wrong or is there a workaround for this problem?

    Otherwise this is a great tool for creating bibliographies.

    Thanks,
    Sandra
  • dstillman
    I was wondering if it's possible that you change ABNT styles in the same way that you did with APA style
    @luisiafa: Sure. That's for these?
    One issue though: can't make it work on Internet Explorer 11 - my company default browser.
    @pedrom34: Yep, that's a known issue, but I'm not sure we'll spend the time trying to fix that. Edge should work fine, for what it's worth.
    wrong citations for the German titles
    @SanDah: That's a tricky one. The difference from Zotero, obviously, is that in Zotero you don't set a citation style in the database itself, so this sort of conversion doesn't make sense. The thinking here is that, when you do choose APA, it's easier to manually correct words that need to be capitalized than to manually lowercase all other words (and also that many users of this tool simply won't be aware of the APA rule, whereas lowercased proper nouns is an obvious error that needs correcting). It's possible that calculus may not be correct for German, and we could conceivably just make it a choice instead of the only option when switching into APA. But it would mean that English titles would often stay as title case.

    The other thing is that I believe ZoteroBib should already be leaving titles alone in APA mode when they come in as mixed case rather than title case, so this often won't be an issue. If you're not seeing that, let us know.
  • bwiernik
    Could a language picker be supplied next to each reference so that casing changes can be turned off for non-English titles?
  • SanDah
    @dstillman: You are right, the problem seems to be only with specific titles. I' ll keep my eyes on this and test how often it happens. Thanks for the fast answer.
  • pme5mv
    Hey, I noticed that the URL lookup on ZoteroBib will not work with URLs that have authentication paths (i.e. when you are researching from an institution login). I had to use a workaround of opening up the same resource in a new window free from the login for my institution to get a stable URL without the authentication path. This workaround isn't totally intuitive. I would LIKE to recommend this tool to my less diligent students who grumble about installing software, but making it hard to use URLs that are found through our library login defeats the purpose of a quick and easy citation writer tool.
  • dstillman
    @pme5mv: We've just added automatic deproxification of URLs that appear to be proxied. This should help in most cases where 1) a proxied URL follows a standard pattern (e.g., https://www-jstor-org.proxy.foo.edu) and 2) the site allows ungated access to basic metadata. Obviously if the site doesn't allow access at all without a proxy or uses awful non-permanent URLs (e.g., EBSCO) and the URL doesn't contain a DOI that we can pick up, there's nothing we can do about that, but this will hopefully mostly address the problem. And, of course, if a given URL doesn't work, it's still possible to add items by ISBN or DOI.
  • luisiafa
    Sure. That's for these?
    @dstillman : exactly! Thanks! :D
  • bjohas
    Looks very nice, thanks! Staying tuned for the backport - very good news!
  • frankweber
    thanks for this great tool! this is perfect for people who have to create a bibliography every now and then. I can't wait to spread the word around our institution, but I know there will be questions about the support of different languages.
    We have our own multilingual style in the repository: "Fachhochschule Vorarlberg (author-date)" and at the moment it looks like zbib is using the english version of they style, resulting in "Accessed on:" instead of "Zugriff am:" and so on.
    I installed the german language pack and changed the interface language of my firefox, but this didn't help. Is there a trick to do this - or is there a chance we'll get multilanguage support for zbib soon?

    regards - and again: thanks for your great work!
    frank
  • Gracile
    Great idea and implementation, thank you very much.

    Bug : diacritics are not always handled properly, e.g: add these ISBNs: 9782130509882 9782247050673 9782247136445
    (by the way, what translator does ZoteroBib use underneath?)

    Features requests :
    – add multiple items at once ;
    – ability to select one's custom style (i.e. not available in the repo, because… it's a custom style).

    Thank you!
  • eamoone
    Love it! Thank you all for this amazing tool.

    I tested it out using Chrome but can't find the saved copy on my computer. I looked in the browser's local storage -- I think. Searched the computer but can't find it that way either. Any idea about where it might be?
  • bwiernik
    It's stored in your browser's cache, but it wouldn't be useful to try to view it other than through the ZoteroBib website. What are you trying to do?
  • dstillman
    @frankweber:
    is there a chance we'll get multilanguage support for zbib soon?
    I think we should be able to do that. I've created an issue for it.

    @Gracile:
    Bug : diacritics are not always handled properly
    Thanks — issue created.
    (by the way, what translator does ZoteroBib use underneath?)
    You can see the translator used in the Library Catalog field.
    Features requests : add multiple items at once
    Meaning the ability to paste more than one identifier in at once? I think that's probably too much, given how much the search box is already trying to do (with text search as well as ambiguous numbers like PMIDs) and the changes it would require in the UI (e.g., multiple review boxes).
    ability to select one's custom style
    I think that's going more into Zotero territory. It would also require a server-side component to fetch styles from most sites due to browser security restrictions. If there's sufficient demand we could consider this, but not sure how necessary it is.
  • Gracile
    Re:Bug
    FWIW I remember Zotero had the same problem years ago.
    Meaning the ability to paste more than one identifier in at once?
    Yes, that would need at least a limit (i.e. no more than 4-5 identifiers at once), but with your explanation I understand it's going to be too much.
    I think that's going more into Zotero territory.
    Ok. It's just that sometimes I'd like to create bibliographies/citations without adding items to Zotero (at the moment, I add then delete them - not a big deal).
  • Al Hood
    Great tool! I will use and share. Please integrate ZoteroBib into ZoteroWeb client.
  • Al Hood
    edited June 20, 2018
    Things I have discovered by zbib.org.

    * Use an annotated style to display abstract/note.

    Note: Use search term 'annotated' to find styles that will display an abstract or note.

    * Abstract/Notes field support simple html/bbc (not sure which) text formatting code (<b>bold</b>, <i>italics</i>)

    * Links seem to be persistent (at least for six months from time uploaded/last visited, see reply by bwiernik below, THANKS!).
  • Al Hood
    edited June 20, 2018
    Question about zbib links.

    The zbib links seem to be persistent. Do they ever expire?

    Note: Expired link means that the URL no longer will display the list of references in the zbib webpage at the time the link was created.
  • bwiernik
    https://zbib.org/faq#how-long-is-my-bibliography-stored
  • mstrahan
    Are there plans to develop a widget Libraries can place on their web site? We are ready to place this on our home page & everyplace else.
  • aarontay
    This is great!
  • nickbart
    zbib.org does not seem to accept shortDOIs (see http://shortdoi.org/). I feel shortDOIs should be treated as first class citizens, just like conventional (long) DOIs, so it would be great if zbib could be made to accept them.
  • bwiernik
    If Zotero is interested in supporting shortDOIs, I have code written to query shortDOI or CrossRef to get the long form and resolve it.
  • adamsmith
    edited July 19, 2018
    shortDOIs are resolved to metadata via DOI content negotiation. I'm strongly hoping I can switch Zotero to this some time this summer/fall.
  • bwiernik
    @adamsmith If you can also have that process work in the Locate menu before forming open search queries that would be amazing.
  • biophysics
    Would be nice if I can input multiple PubmedID/DOI from a simple text file and it formats outputs all at the same time. Thanks
  • bamatakar
    Hi !
    It's Nice tool. Congratulatation
    I think it can't work on Internet Explorer 10 . I must work with this browser

  • bwiernik
    Internet Explorer 10 is no longer supported by Microsoft and is not safe to use. You should switch to Edge or Internet Explorer 11.
This discussion has been closed.