I use Zotero for academic research. For me, it is much more than just a citations manager; I use it to keep track of books and articles I want to acquire, what libraries near me have them, where I can buy one, whether I have read it, and if so I attach reading notes on which I can search to find texts that mention specific topics of interest.

I will normally create the Book record in my Zotero database using the browser add-while in WorldCat.org or my own University library app as soon as the. Book attracts my interest, before I have actually seen it.

When I get hold of a book, I routinely go to the table of contents and create Book Section records in Zotero for each section, especially if it is an anthology or exhibition catalogue with essays by different authors. Often they are reprints of articles originally published in a journal. That means, later, when I am looking for an article reprint or an essay, a Zotero search will give me a list of all the books that contain it (as well as the original article if I have also made a Journal article entry with the same name).

As well as helping me find material, this setup enables me to create multiple-source citations that say things like “first published as in ; reprinted as in ; extract reproduced as in ; English translation available as in ”.

To create a Book Section record in Zotero, my current procedure is to duplicate the Book record, change the type to Book Section, then fill in the Title and other details such as Author and Page numbers. I check the book details before copying, because WorldCat usually fails to distinguish authors from editors and often adds phantom authors such as the name of someone who is the subject of the work or the name of an institution, which is not a person and not required in citations. It also often puts extraneous punctuation in the publisher field or mixes up publisher and place.

The shortcoming of this procedure is that once copied, the Book Section has a separate existence. There is no dynamic link. The Book details in a Book Section record are separate for each Book Section, so if I later realise that I need to change the Book details, despite my diligence (!), I have to copy and paste the change to every Book Section. That procedure relies on a search matching the Book Title, which would fail if one of the titles is different from the others.

My request, then, is for dynamic links between the Book and all its Book Sections. By ‘dynamic’ I mean that if I change the Book details, the changes are automatically reflected in every Book Section belonging to that Book. This would save time when updating and ensure that all the citations from all sections of the book are consistent.