Upgrade StorageUI Feature Request - locking collections
I haven't seen this one, but it may be very useful.
Let me start with a background to this idea.
I rely on collections for organising my whole workflow. I use collections to organise papers thematically as well as pragmatically. It means if I do an extended library (or online) hunt, it all goes in a collection, and if I research a topic, it all goes in the collection as well as being divided into discrete subcollections. If I have a bunch of papers to go through, I will have a subcollection with a "done" title or equivalent.
Then, every now and then I will do vast reorganisations of these collections to make them better fit my current needs. I will make extensive use of the Ctrl key to check if everything is going where it should. I will also use this key to see if a record is in other relevant collections while I am actively working on something.
However, this style of collection use means that I usually will not be interested in whether the record is in ALL possible collections, only in some. The way it works now I typically get a massive uncollapsing of collections after some minor verification round on a set of papers. Then to regain my sanity I collapse all (the "-" key on My library) and work my way through the tree of collections to where I was before.
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So now to the idea:
It would be wonderful if there was a keyboard shortcut or an option in the right-click menu to lock selected collections. It would basically prevent them from uncollapsing until the lock is lifted. This way they wouldn't get in the way when not needed.
I think that this feature could gain a wide appeal.
Let me start with a background to this idea.
I rely on collections for organising my whole workflow. I use collections to organise papers thematically as well as pragmatically. It means if I do an extended library (or online) hunt, it all goes in a collection, and if I research a topic, it all goes in the collection as well as being divided into discrete subcollections. If I have a bunch of papers to go through, I will have a subcollection with a "done" title or equivalent.
Then, every now and then I will do vast reorganisations of these collections to make them better fit my current needs. I will make extensive use of the Ctrl key to check if everything is going where it should. I will also use this key to see if a record is in other relevant collections while I am actively working on something.
However, this style of collection use means that I usually will not be interested in whether the record is in ALL possible collections, only in some. The way it works now I typically get a massive uncollapsing of collections after some minor verification round on a set of papers. Then to regain my sanity I collapse all (the "-" key on My library) and work my way through the tree of collections to where I was before.
---------
So now to the idea:
It would be wonderful if there was a keyboard shortcut or an option in the right-click menu to lock selected collections. It would basically prevent them from uncollapsing until the lock is lifted. This way they wouldn't get in the way when not needed.
I think that this feature could gain a wide appeal.
Here is, once again, why I think a collections lock is much superior to manually restoring the collection open/close state:
- when you press Ctrl to find out where else a library item may be, you are usually interested only in some locations, not all
- showing all locations means that many collections get uncollapsed, which comes with a cost of legibility of the user interface and impairs your ability to find only the relevant results
- it's other predictable downsides are thus distraction and a slow down of work process while working on the results of the Ctrl search
- having to manually restore the previous open/closed state of the collections is a further distraction and is likely to be time consuming
It is also worth adding that it happens regularly that some collections that do not contain the record for which the Ctrl is pressed get uncollapsed, just because. It's a further hindrance to legibility.
As you can clearly see, a collections lock could greatly improve the productivity of working with collections. It may not be so obvious if someone has, let's say, under 1k records in their library. I have under 3k and the lack of this feature is getting more and more noticable. I think that Zotero should help people stay productive regardless of how advanced a researcher they are. A collections lock seems a natural addition to the kind of workflow already imposed and supported by other features of the Zotero UI.
We've also long planned to add an alternative way to view the collections an item is in, and it sounds like that might just work better for you than the Ctrl feature. If that's happening, that would obviously be a bug. But I'd guess that what you're seeing is that, if some collections are open and you collapse the library root, if you then press Ctrl, the library root will be opened again and the previous collections will still be open, in addition to any that contain the selected item.
In any case, I'm afraid there's no way we're going to do what you suggest — it's just a bizarre, convoluted, non-standard idea. We can't add a whole locking mechanism to the collections tree — that you would have to manually manage, and be able to see the status of somehow — just to change the behavior of one very specific function that most people don't even know exists.
From my experience if you collapse the library root using "-" key, it collapses all of the collections that you have. So it works like a reset button, and then I can reopen only the relevant collections.
When I use the Ctrl key, I usually use it from within a collection, so the fact that other collections that do not contain the record I am inquiring about do uncollapse would hint at a bug then.
In my opinion my idea is in no way more bizzarre than the idea of the rain umbrella which was originally considered rather grotesque by the general public. Any genuinely new idea steps out of the comfort zone of people who cling to the old ways, but eventually this is how progress is made. As far as I am concerned, I always seek new ways to make my work more efficient - and they don't need to be aesthetically pleasing as long as they do the job.