Upgrade StorageFeature Requests for Standalone Notes and their Collections
I find that the standalone notes are as important to my work as those associated with sources. And with the new trend toward smart notes or "slip-box" note-taking (which I believe Zotero could do well), I wonder if a few features might make notes all the more valuable. Here's what I suggest:
For a standalone note displayed in a separate window, could the current collection path be displayed in the window? Otherwise repetitive detail has to be added to a note to give it meaning outside the Zotero desktop box. I am finding it useful to open multiple windows and organize them on my desktop to solve problems, answer questions, or think creatively about something that involves multiple information fragments. But outside the Zotero box, they sometimes lose essential context. For example, in creating blog posts, each biweekly post collection folder includes a note labeled "Call to Action." I plan ahead what I want the reader to do. If I want to look at a bunch of "Call to Action" notes to see the progression of reader action, I have five or six windows with identical labels. If the windows also showed the label of the collection, which has the date and subject of the blog post, I'd have the progression. (Oh, and this item needs to wrap or something....some paths will be long.)
For standalone notes displayed in what I call the Research List (middle pane), could an option be added to the right-click menu to show all collection paths that contain the item? (This would be helpful for source reference items, too.)
Can the collection path also be added to the Report? Or can we be given a preference to add it to the report, if desired?
Finally, can the search engine be allowed to search on the collection labels as part of the "everything" search? And in the Advanced Search, can you add "includes" to the search criteria for the "Collection" item, to allow for a portion of the label to be found? As the collections and subcollections get into the hundreds and beyond, it's difficult to find things that might only be findable with the collection labels included in the search. For example, I had created a collection long ago called "Zotero Wish List" and had dropped some standalone notes in it with ideas. None of the notes used the word "wish list" in them, but simply described a problem. Today, when I looked for the collection, searching on "wish list," I couldn't find it. And using the Collection "is" criteria in Advanced Search, it was not much easier than just going down the collection pane, one by one.
I don't know how difficult this is from a programming standpoint, but I know it would be a great help to those of us who use Zotero very heavily to shape our writing and lecturing.
Thanks for anything you can do....
For a standalone note displayed in a separate window, could the current collection path be displayed in the window? Otherwise repetitive detail has to be added to a note to give it meaning outside the Zotero desktop box. I am finding it useful to open multiple windows and organize them on my desktop to solve problems, answer questions, or think creatively about something that involves multiple information fragments. But outside the Zotero box, they sometimes lose essential context. For example, in creating blog posts, each biweekly post collection folder includes a note labeled "Call to Action." I plan ahead what I want the reader to do. If I want to look at a bunch of "Call to Action" notes to see the progression of reader action, I have five or six windows with identical labels. If the windows also showed the label of the collection, which has the date and subject of the blog post, I'd have the progression. (Oh, and this item needs to wrap or something....some paths will be long.)
For standalone notes displayed in what I call the Research List (middle pane), could an option be added to the right-click menu to show all collection paths that contain the item? (This would be helpful for source reference items, too.)
Can the collection path also be added to the Report? Or can we be given a preference to add it to the report, if desired?
Finally, can the search engine be allowed to search on the collection labels as part of the "everything" search? And in the Advanced Search, can you add "includes" to the search criteria for the "Collection" item, to allow for a portion of the label to be found? As the collections and subcollections get into the hundreds and beyond, it's difficult to find things that might only be findable with the collection labels included in the search. For example, I had created a collection long ago called "Zotero Wish List" and had dropped some standalone notes in it with ideas. None of the notes used the word "wish list" in them, but simply described a problem. Today, when I looked for the collection, searching on "wish list," I couldn't find it. And using the Collection "is" criteria in Advanced Search, it was not much easier than just going down the collection pane, one by one.
I don't know how difficult this is from a programming standpoint, but I know it would be a great help to those of us who use Zotero very heavily to shape our writing and lecturing.
Thanks for anything you can do....
(It's important to understand that the search bar isn't technically a search — it's a filter of the items currently in view, as determined by the library/collection/search you're in and any selected tags. So if you were already in a collection rather than the library root and searched for a collection name, you would only find matches for items that were in both the current collection and the one you were searching for. That's potentially confusing, so I think it'd be helpful to be able to provide feedback on what's actually being searched.) I don't think that's really a solution for not being able to find one specific collection — you're trying to find the collection, not the items, and Advanced Search is searching for the latter. A collection search in the main window is a common request, though, and it's generally planned, though there are some UI challenges that need to be resolved. Note that, at least when you know the beginning of the collection, you can click in the collections pane, press "+" to expand all collections, and just start typing the collection name to select it.
Interesting, also, about the conflation of tags and collections. I'd never considered that, but I suppose it's why I rarely use tags, except to flag that I own a particular source in my personal library. The hierarchy is particularly important to me--and one of the many reasons I prefer Zotero to EndNote, which as I recall only gave you three layers of hierarchy. Not enough.
On the freestanding window, I notice that the current subcollection remains highlighted (in gray) as you select the note item, so perhaps is still known to Zotero? Is it possible as a person presses the button to edit in the separate window that Zotero captures the collection path that is currently active and displays that?
Grateful as always!
Donna
For standalone notes, we could consider adding a Show in Library button to the bottom section, to provide an equivalent to the Parent Item field that shows up for child notes. Clicking the Parent Item title for a child note selects the item in either the current collection or the library root, after which you can use the modifier key to show collections containing the item.
I rarely make a standalone note that I put in multiple collections, but I might be unusual in that.
For now, I'll use more meaningful labels in my notes, but I'd love not to have to.
Thanks!
Donna