How to keep items in personal AND group library updated?
If you have hundreds or thousands of items that exist in your personal library and one or more group libraries where you are admin/owner, how can you possibly keep the items updated/current in both places?
I am at a loss and hoping others here have found a workable (if not perfect/easy) solution.
As just one example: Often when I save an item to my personal library, it is an ASAP or in-press version where it has a DOI but not yet been assigned a volume, serial, or page numbers. So, I save it in my personal library, then drag-drop it to my group library. At some point, I will update the metadata to include volume/serial/page numbers in the entry in my personal library. Does it mean, each time I do this, I have to go and do the same thing in my group library?
Here's an example of an in-press article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361920916308197
(it will not be in-press at some point in time, but it is in-press as of Nov 11, 2017)
Tags present an even more dreadful situation. I am continuously adding and cleaning tags. I cannot even imagine a workflow where I could possibly keep them updated in both personal and group library. I mean, I could go the brute force way but that requires an order more time than I have, and I am confident I will still end up with inconsistencies/errors.
What am I missing?
I am at a loss and hoping others here have found a workable (if not perfect/easy) solution.
As just one example: Often when I save an item to my personal library, it is an ASAP or in-press version where it has a DOI but not yet been assigned a volume, serial, or page numbers. So, I save it in my personal library, then drag-drop it to my group library. At some point, I will update the metadata to include volume/serial/page numbers in the entry in my personal library. Does it mean, each time I do this, I have to go and do the same thing in my group library?
Here's an example of an in-press article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361920916308197
(it will not be in-press at some point in time, but it is in-press as of Nov 11, 2017)
Tags present an even more dreadful situation. I am continuously adding and cleaning tags. I cannot even imagine a workflow where I could possibly keep them updated in both personal and group library. I mean, I could go the brute force way but that requires an order more time than I have, and I am confident I will still end up with inconsistencies/errors.
What am I missing?
I guess this is legacy in the code but it starting to feel rather dated.
all this could be solved if permission were integrated
@adamsmith @bwiernik @Rintze Can you'll please chime in?
I am really at a loss about how to keep both my personal library and the group library updated. I am frequently improving the metadata of articles saved a long time ago. I might be adding new tags, or renaming tags because new information requires to fit in to my tags taxonomy (a work in progress). I do not mind the manual labor, but in this case, it is so much that I cannot see any possible way.
It's pretty clear that there is room for improvements here (both easier updating and relative links/linked items in groups), but I don't think any of it is trivial to code. Certainly not something I could do.
@bwiernik, don't is not really an option
@dstillman would it be possible to allow an item to be drag-dropped to a group even if it already exists? Groups already have duplicate detection and merging. So, if I update items in my personal library or another group, at least I should be able to drag-drop them and then use the group's duplicate merge functions. Not very elegant but a step forward from having to manually sync every updated field.
Basically, I would like to achieve the functional equivalent of us both working from the same library/group, such that subsequent updates in the reference (title, etc etc) will be reflected in the Word citation. But I would like to segregate the RA's access to my main library and limit him to working in the shared group. If, to simplify, I later delete the group, is there a way to reorient the citations (originally referencing the group) in Word to "My Library", given that the content will be the same?
Thanks!
About 2/3 of my public bibliog also belongs in my own personal bibliog. Then I also have a great deal more specialist material that belongs there,b.ut not of interest to the public
I would like to have one mega bibliog on Zotero - My Library (Everything) - and mark entries as
Public Group A and/ or
My Stuff (my own files and books)
Others would have more than one Group - in fact I probably would if I didn't have to update entriesmanually.
In use this would act like a second set of Tags only with permissions.
I am also finding it hard to work with group libraries in a way that allows updating of information and doesn't break existing links to documents. But I have no idea what an ideal workflow would look like for Zotero. Has anyone ever proposed anything that seemed good and wasn't rejected as unworkable by the development team?
1. Personal. Permanent. Needs permission tools.
2. Research group. Long-lasting or permanent. Needs permission tools.
3. Course or project. Temporary (but can last for some years), made with the view to be integrated into 1 and/or 2 on closure. Needs transfer tools.
4. Paper or short project. Temporary, as in 3. Needs transfer tools.
This would be quite an important addition for our workflows. A system like this would also have to be coupled with some monitoring tools and logs. Who adds what when.
Thanks for considering.
Really the only feasible solution would be to share "My Library" folders, as the prospect of losing Related Items is a disaster, as I use that extensively to link papers that are cited together.
Dear Developers, we need this feature urgently.