Are not EndNote labels added to Zotero as tags?

Someone with more recent experience with EndNote will need to comment but my impression is that labels are a one-word flag that also often has a color associated with it. I believe it is an EndNote user defined keyword. I did a quick look at Google results and it appears that I am close if not on target.

I did a forum search and couldn't find anything but I thought that someone asked this question long before.If I'm wrong, my apologies to all.

Isn't it saved to the extra field? That's where things that zotero doesn't understand usually goes.

From my impression looking around help forums and such, it seems that BibTeX keys are much more commonly used here—I think that modifying the RIS and Endnote XML translators to store it in Extra with "Citation Key: " would be the best way to go.

What field would you want this to go in? Would Call Number be appropriate? If so, export as RIS, open the file in a text editor like Notepad and find-and-replace "LB - " with "CN - ". Tag is probably not a good fit considering that each item will have its own number.

Okay, I’d go with Call Number since they are basically ID numbers specific to your personal library.

The EndNote label is used to generate the BibTeX label used for citations in BibTeX when exporting from EN to BibTeX. This is important for consistency of reference labelling across systems. I have used 3 types of systems so far - ProCite, EndNote and a few BibTeX-based systems. Currently, BibTeX export in Zotero uses Authorsurname_Year as its default BT label, but this is not sufficiently unique across entire libraries (try it).

I use the label field from EndNote as the master key to track all of my 3000+ references - it is also used as the (base) filename for the file(s) associated with the record. I don't place the file into the EndNote directory tree, but rather in a separate folder (historically, because I also ran ProCite during a transition phase and kept it separate and it made it possible to have two different programs look at the same set of files - they were not "lost" inside the directory trees of either ProC or EndN).

I think the addition of a distinct "label" field would aid the functionality of Zotero (which I am currently inspecting for utility as a change-over from EndNote). It is not the same as the Call Number field, which I use to track location info for the actual object to which the record refers (e.g.: L=electronic on computer, F=hardcopy in filing cabinet, S=on shelf at work office, H=on shelf in home office, etc).

It would serve as the master identifier for a specific reference and would allow for easy BibTeX export, while also allowing much easier import from the many EndNoters who would happily come across if they could do so easily...

Please consider adding such a "label" field. It would probably help uptake...
Thanks.

@drjvroros Yes, my advice was specific to the original poster’s use case. For you, you would would to do what Emiliano says and store in Extra with the “Citekey: “ label. If you want, I can tell you how to modify the Endnote import file to do that automatically when you import from Endnote.

Like we have both said, type it in Extra as:
Citation Key: label

Install the BetterBibTeX plugin (which you will want to do generally if you use Zotero with LaTeX) and it will use this as the citekey.

Open your exported RIS file in a text editor and the find-and-replace all instances of “LB - ” with “M2 - Citation Key: ” Save and import into Zotero.

The main advantage of using XML is that it preserves rich text like italics in fields. If you don't have much of that, there should be little difference between XML and RIS from Endnote.

No, it still imports the contents of the label/label pair into the Zotero Notes as something without a corresponding field.

Is there an XML tag that can be used to import into the Extra field of Z?

Thus I would replace
label style face="normal" font="default" size="100%" Citation Key: etc /style /label
with something that imports etc into the Extra field.

Never did much javascript (even though I did work for Netscape back in the 1990s...) and am too long out of the coding game these days.

I guess I'll just keep hoping and waiting for when CiteKey is an actual thing which is part of the field structure (as hinted at further above by @emilianoeheyns last October).

At least I have now become familiar with the quick transfer of the main data from EN to Zotero in case I have to do so. I haven't had to do mods to import-export tags for over a decade (when I transferred my ProCite to EndNote). Mind you, the several times I've run this in various configurations were still very slow: ~2-3 hours for the 3500 refs I have.

Thanks everyone for all your help. Fingers crossed for Citekey.

@emilianoeheyns - only the file that comes with the standard distro of Z. I've not had a go at modifying anything.

No, I think we should do this. I think initially I was hesitant because it seemed unclear what label was used for, but citekey, as @bwiernik says above, seems to be by far the most common. I think I can get some sample data.