Upgrade StorageShow Creator's first name in addition to last name in the middle pane
First, a sincere thanks to the Zotero developers and community for creating a wonderful piece of software. (I'm using standalone Zotero 4.0.21.2 on Windows 7, by the way.)
I'd love it if Zotero could display the given name [i.e., first name] in addition to the surname [i.e., last name] of Creators in the middle pane.
I work on East Asian politics and there are many, many authors with common last names like Chen, Wang, Yang, and Kim. Surnames alone just aren't enough for visually differentiating discrete authors. For instance, my database has nine different authors surnamed Yang. So, here is what I see in the Creator and Year columns of one section of my library:
Yang 1996
Yang 2004
Yang 2007
Yang 2000
Yang 2003
Yang 2005
Yang 1996
Yang 2008
(etc., for many more Yangs)
instead of what I'd prefer, and how EndNote has it, which is:
Yang, Dali 1996
Yang, Dali 2004
Yang, Dali 2007
Yang, Guobin 2000
Yang, Guobin 2003
Yang, Guobin 2005
Yang, Ji 1996
Yang, Kuisong 2008
(etc., for many more Yangs)
From perusing the forum, I get that the Creator field is special and, for single-authored work by a non-institutional author, I gather that it contains just the surname of that author. So I know this might not be easy. But I'm wondering if there is something that could be done about this, or some workaround. For example, if it were possible to show an author field (containing the full name of the first author, or the full names of all authors) as a column in addition to the Creator column, that would be an OK workaround for me.
Others have made this point too. In posts on a different thread concerning sorting, JonEP and others such as m715 pointed out the problem of displaying (in the middle pane) multiple authors with the same surname. E.g., they mentioned having many authors with the last name of Smith, or works by both Ben and Perry Anderson, or Ernst Bloch and Maurice Bloch. See: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/8057/1/sorting-in-the-library-window/
Thanks for giving this your consideration.
Ben
I'd love it if Zotero could display the given name [i.e., first name] in addition to the surname [i.e., last name] of Creators in the middle pane.
I work on East Asian politics and there are many, many authors with common last names like Chen, Wang, Yang, and Kim. Surnames alone just aren't enough for visually differentiating discrete authors. For instance, my database has nine different authors surnamed Yang. So, here is what I see in the Creator and Year columns of one section of my library:
Yang 1996
Yang 2004
Yang 2007
Yang 2000
Yang 2003
Yang 2005
Yang 1996
Yang 2008
(etc., for many more Yangs)
instead of what I'd prefer, and how EndNote has it, which is:
Yang, Dali 1996
Yang, Dali 2004
Yang, Dali 2007
Yang, Guobin 2000
Yang, Guobin 2003
Yang, Guobin 2005
Yang, Ji 1996
Yang, Kuisong 2008
(etc., for many more Yangs)
From perusing the forum, I get that the Creator field is special and, for single-authored work by a non-institutional author, I gather that it contains just the surname of that author. So I know this might not be easy. But I'm wondering if there is something that could be done about this, or some workaround. For example, if it were possible to show an author field (containing the full name of the first author, or the full names of all authors) as a column in addition to the Creator column, that would be an OK workaround for me.
Others have made this point too. In posts on a different thread concerning sorting, JonEP and others such as m715 pointed out the problem of displaying (in the middle pane) multiple authors with the same surname. E.g., they mentioned having many authors with the last name of Smith, or works by both Ben and Perry Anderson, or Ernst Bloch and Maurice Bloch. See: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/8057/1/sorting-in-the-library-window/
Thanks for giving this your consideration.
Ben
My only request is similar to Ben's above. While via Zotero Standalone's lovely drag-and-drop column ordering feature, I have been able to reorder my columns to match the familiar (and therefore easy-to-read) ordering of information characteristic of reference lists in my field (Creator, Year, Title), I have discovered I'm still struggling somewhat in scanning through my creator column to check the contents of my library. This may seem silly, but it's because while my field uses "&" to connect the surnames for two-author papers, Zotero's two-author display uses the spelled-out "and." I'm therefore wondering whether Zotero Standalone's column display style could be rendered modifiable by users via either a "Zotero-Library-Window Column-Display" style option added to Tools>Preferences>Advanced>General>Open CSL Editor? (Or via a new "Zotero-Library-Window Column-Display Preferences Editor" whose backend code could perhaps be informed by the Open CSL Editor and perhaps made accessible to users via a button located next to the "Open CSL Editor" button?)
Though I understand that requests I can't currently afford to support via donation may be very low on your priority list, I still want to mention my variation on Ben's request above in hopes that it encourages others who share our interest also to express their request (ideally, along with financial support for its development!). Again, thanks SO much for all your work on Zotero — It's amazing!
Monica
I have my Zotero setup with Creator - Year - Title, and generally scroll down until I find the creator and then go from there. Having several authors with the same last name (but different people) often makes it confusing to find the paper I'm looking for (looking for Yang, 2004) in a list of 15 Yangs with varying years in varying orders because they are different authors.
On a side note, I've tried citing works by different Huangs, but it didn't disambiguate with an initial. Would that have to do with my style or with Zotero itself?
This is the only minor complaint I have about Zotero, otherwise everything is perfect. Thanks for this great software!
Edit: I just noticed I already replied to this same thread half a year ago. My-my. Consider this a bump, and forgive my poor memory.
Knowing that Zotero does indeed sort by first name even when it doesn't display it makes me hopeful that the feature of displaying the first name would be easier to implement.
Hope for improvement on this. Thank you for dev.
Please consider this feature, dev!
My wish would be a "Last name, first name" option, with the complete first name visible.
Thanks for asking! For me, it is not only about disambiguation, it is about the weired ways of my memory. I tend to forget last names easier, the given name gives me another hint to quickly identify a paper.
On the other hand, as said, I cannot just switch to the existing "first name last name" option, as Zotero will then sort by the given name, and also the add on "ZotFile" will organize my pdfs in carpets named this way - both I find inconvenient.
For me, both. There are many creators in my library having the same last name (e.g., Zhang); besides, I also want to see the first name of an author for memory-friendly.
So I want to add two option: 1) show the creator's full name (e.g., Zhang, Fistname); 2) show creator's full name initial (e.g., Zhang, F.), which can save some width.
Thanks again!
I created the comment in the lastest discussion about the missing function. I wish all of you can leave your comment in the discussion. I hope developers can see our request.
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/90736/change-number-of-authors-in-creator-column#latest