How can I archive a subset of my Zotero database?

mhucka
I use the Mac desktop client, and have a library with several thousand entries. I want to "archive" a couple of thousand of them, in the sense of moving them out of my library completely (including their file attachments), keeping them in some form where I could bring them back if needed in the future. The form could be anything; I only want to avoid deleting them outright.

As far as I can tell, I can't create another Zotero library from within the Zotero client while the current library is open, thus preventing something obvious like drag-and-dropping entries from one local library to another. The File → Export Library menu command only offers options that would convert the existing library to another format, and they all seem to be lossy transformations. Searching the Zotero forums did not immediately uncover a solution. The Zotero documentation doesn't seem to cover this topic, unless I missed it.

I find it hard to believe that this is the first time someone has wanted to do this, but at this point, I'm stumped. I feel like I'm missing something very obvious, so I apologize to have to ask here, but does anyone have any suggestions or pointers for how to accomplish this?
  • adamsmith
    There's nothing trivial. It comes up occasionally, so you're definitely not the first one asking, but archiving projects isn't, in fact, something that's getting asked about or requested a ton, I assume mostly because people don't have libraries that are _that_ clearly delineated (and because Zotero has gotten good enough with mid-sized libraries that keeping an extra 1k items in a library doesn't matter.

    I think the options are:
    - Zotero RDF export. It's fairly (but not completely) lossless.
    - Zotero groups:
    a) Just move items to a Zotero group to archive. That's quite elegant, but they'll obviously still be there
    b) Move items to a group and from there to a different account

    Note that all three of these break connections to citations in existing documents. There's no way to remove items from your library and keep links to citations in docs once they're restored.
  • mhucka
    Thank you for this info. I haven't had time to try the alternatives but very much appreciate your reply.
  • sharachchandra
    I posted a similar query here:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/406304#Comment_406304

    The above options suggested by adamsmith are useful, thanks. But not really workable because if I move a 50,000 ref library to a different account, then I will only have web access to it (by logging into that account), and that is quite painful. Am wondering if other options have popped in the last couple of years.
  • bwiernik
    You can selectively sync group libraries. My approach is to put items in a group library, then disable syncing for that library/remove it from the local copy. That way I have web access without adding to the size of the local database
  • dstillman
    edited April 24, 2022
    Deselecting a library from syncing doesn't currently remove the local copy if you've already synced, but we should probably change it to do that — that's likely what people generally expect to happen, and it makes more sense than just disabling future syncing. And it would then provide by far the cleanest and simplest solution to this (whereas anything involving local archiving would get really complicated with other synced devices).
  • bwiernik
    That change would be great!
  • dstillman
    (Apparently we've discussed this before, and it's quite a bit more complicated, since a lot of code counts on My Library existing. But still would be good to do.)
  • bwiernik
    At least being able to remove group libraries would be hugely helpful. When I am done teaching a course or doing a systematic review, I really don’t need those libraries in my local database, but removing them requires syncing down a fresh database with syncing disabled.
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