Upgrade StorageDifferent Document Types
I would like to see a way to enter in documents not listed on the Zotero list. I'm trying to input a Study Guide and an Unpublished Play Manuscript.
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Bruce--Zotero "document" item type is actually unusable for most "other" items at least for two reasons: 1. it doesn't have a field for "type" of source--how do you indicate what you're actually citing? 2. it doesn't have a field for "place" (of either publication or writing). It has a publisher field, but anything published usually requires place of publication, while most unpublished sources will need a field for "place" or "city" where the document was produced.
But more importantly (since not everyone agrees with me), let's have the Zotero guys add such a field. This field would be understood as a plain text description that would be printed in the bibliographic entry.
The problem when you do plain text, of course, is the content is then language-specific. So this bears some thought. I'd be really careful that it fits within the plans we've discussed on the dev list (custom types and such). Switching to the richer model would solve this: a publisher is an organization, which is an agent that has an address.
6. National Transportation Safety Board, "Airline fatalities for 1994 climbed to five-year high," news release, January 19, 1995.
Where "news release" is "type" of source. I don't think that this information is any different from data in any other field--it shouldn't present any problems for the hierarchical/custom types model.
But given your post here: I'm guessing you don't use Chicago. Although scholars in many disciplines use archival sources, most citation styles have very limited standards and guidelines for citing archival material. Chicago style (the standard style for historians) provides the most complete guidelines for those of us who primarily work in archives, and it makes sense that in determining field structure for unpublished sources Zotero use Chicago.
Any future plans for Zotero and related standards need to pay more, not less, attention to specific "idiosyncratic" needs of historians. Currently, Zotero has dedicated item types for dictionary entry and encyclopedia entry, which are glorified "book section" types with no additional fields whatsoever, while I have to explain to historians here and elsewhere that they have to wait for dedicated item types for sources like "archival collection" and "periodical"--types that need their own bibliographic citation format and translator programming and right now are ingested from catalogs such as WorldCat, incorrectly, as books.
[Edit: Just to reinforce my point about the need to adapt Zotero for historical research--see this review of Zotero. Many of the features suggested in the review are already planned, but some are not, and the main point clearly needs to be emphasized more.]
My point is that massive styles like Chicago are sort of like the Bible: a set of guidelines that are in fact rather flexible, but which people read into them a rather inflexible set of rules that reflect their own preconceptions.
Spend some time with other simlar styles in other fields and you'll see the same thing. So Zotero is a tool for historians? What about the philosophers, and the mathmeticians, and the geographers (me), and the chemists, all of whom tend to have their priorities?
I'd really like a tool that can make everyone happy. A good design and model should allow just that, but blind following of the letter of a single style guide (Chicago) may not.
WRT to the type issues, if we get people from all fields in a room and ask them to list their pet types, zotero will end up with 200 of them easily. Chicago alone has 50 or 60 IIRC, depending on how you count. I agree with the basic point that there is no rhyme or reason to the existing list of types. I've repeatedly been saying we need to have a conversation about the principles that say when something gets its own type.
I still stand by my point though, that periodicals and collections are not ever cited as such. The main problem in the current Zotero model is that they are not full class objects in the data model that are then related to other resources: they just get treated as fields.
Charles F. McGovern, Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). I believe that while the specific requirements of, for example, legal scholars or social scientists will be well taken care of in the proposed model, historians' requirements are not entirely taken into account. This forum seems to be an appropriate place to argue for features that should be included, which is why I've been posting here.
It's admittedly a gray area though, and in any case, treating them as full class objects is critical, no matter their specific semantics. I have a feeling the legal scholars might disagree. From what I know, their needs may well be more demanding, particularly because of the importance of tracing the history of precedent (a long lists of linked resources, basically).
But see below on the last bit. Yes, and I for one love to see the historians active here! My owns needs are much closer to the historians than it is to the chemists, and I've been saying for a long time that existing bibliographic software and standards really have treated the humanities and law as afterthoughts. Clearly that won't happen here ;-)
All I'm saying is that there's a difference between arguing for what one needs to store (who authored the introduction, or whether a document is a "press release") and how one should do it (add a field "introduction by" or "add an item type 'Press Release'", or something else).
Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002). My point was that one can't use "document" to cite a press release because there are not enough fields to store data. I'm fine with using "manuscript", and using "type of manuscript" field to denote a type of source such as "press release." That could work for the future model, or it may not--that is for the "ontology" team to decide--but "document" definitely won't work.
Is there some place in the text where you see an actual citation like "(AT&T Archives)"?
In my experience with these sorts of examples (which is more limited than yours): no. It seems to me the convention of listing archives or newspapers in the bibliography is just way to say where the cited documents came from, and sometimes to include within that an abbreviation that one uses within the citation proper (mainly for the convenience of the author, rather than the reader, BTW).
But, for example, I wouldn't expect if this was automated in Zotero that you would be manually inserting citation fields in your documents to the archives or newspapers. Would you?
Mind you, I'm still not sure how one *would* automate it elegantly! But I know John has been thinking about this a bit. If you need to include full publisher or archive information, true: it won't work *now*, with the existing model, which is rather inflexible. But a manuscript is still just an unpublished document.
I've added code to citeproc-js, for use in style development, that allows CSL fields not provided on an application (Zotero) item to be parsed out of the "note" variable. It's a hack, and perhaps should be disabled by default, but it may help establish the case for particular extensions to available fields, and allow style development to proceed in advance of changes within Zotero proper.