Upgrade StorageDoing more with standalone notes - moving within folder? new report styles? export to Excel?
I am now thinking a lot about using Zotero for a Zettelkasten note-taking method. In many ways, Zotero's Standalone Notes are terrific for this method, in that notes can be linked up with bibliographic sources and with one another; they can also be tagged, and they can be numbered either via Call Numbers or just by entering the Zettel number at the start of the first line of text in the note. The ONLY thing I don't see Zotero doing well is allowing you to grab some of your standalone notes, put them somewhere (either a new folder or a Report)...and move them around visually, as you experiment with how you will organize your writing project. There are three ways I can think of that could help with this.
1. Solution 1: Allow user to drag notes up and down within a folder, including (but not limited to) allowing us to make a note a child item to another note, preferably several layers deep.
2. Better: Create a "notecard view" for one's standalone notes, where one could literally drag and drop the notes around one another, just as one could move physical notes around a physical desktop. That might be a bit beyond Zotero's wheelhouse, though.
3. Workaround: Allow export of all Notes to tabular/Excel format, with dates in columns, text of note in a column, related item(s) in a column, and tags in a column. At least that way we can drag the rows of a spreadsheet around.
4. Better: create a Report format or style for Standalone Notes that would eliminate the timestamps and include only the text of the standalone note plus the Related items field, preferably with the Related Item(s) in a short, author-date format, and any tags. Or even just a way to choose your own format, selecting which of those parts you want from the Standalone Notes in the report.
5. Best: create a Report format for Standalone Notes that would combine the selected notes into one single document, inserting in-text citations after any notes that include Related sources. The document would need to support Zotero code, as Word does.
If Zotero can already do any of the above things, in a way that allows me to arrange some of my standalone notes visually as an aid to organizing an outline, I'd love to learn more.
1. Solution 1: Allow user to drag notes up and down within a folder, including (but not limited to) allowing us to make a note a child item to another note, preferably several layers deep.
2. Better: Create a "notecard view" for one's standalone notes, where one could literally drag and drop the notes around one another, just as one could move physical notes around a physical desktop. That might be a bit beyond Zotero's wheelhouse, though.
3. Workaround: Allow export of all Notes to tabular/Excel format, with dates in columns, text of note in a column, related item(s) in a column, and tags in a column. At least that way we can drag the rows of a spreadsheet around.
4. Better: create a Report format or style for Standalone Notes that would eliminate the timestamps and include only the text of the standalone note plus the Related items field, preferably with the Related Item(s) in a short, author-date format, and any tags. Or even just a way to choose your own format, selecting which of those parts you want from the Standalone Notes in the report.
5. Best: create a Report format for Standalone Notes that would combine the selected notes into one single document, inserting in-text citations after any notes that include Related sources. The document would need to support Zotero code, as Word does.
If Zotero can already do any of the above things, in a way that allows me to arrange some of my standalone notes visually as an aid to organizing an outline, I'd love to learn more.
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rbrekhusIt's been a little while since I posted this, so I thought I'd check in. I'm hoping that Zotero coders can make a huge improvement to an already-great bibliographic management program, by doing something relatively modest to expand the power of Notes.Thank you for considering.
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shanapoteMight want to take a look at the Better Notes plugin for Zotero. I think this will do all you are asking in point #5. I use it to form my documents and can move notes around with a simple cut and paste.