Feature Request: An updated 'Books and book sections'

naif.here
edited May 13, 2025
Wondering if anyone has found a way to dissect a way to reference to the same book. Some books I have are really large and I use a paid Zotero account (because I annotate here too) so if I have to add multiple chapters, it means that I have to add those books multiple times - clogging up the space three times.

My questions would be:
1. Why can the book sections not be nested under the main books?
2. Most of these pdfs already have demarcations of page numbers - why can't we designate those specific page numbers.

I'm having several double copies now which is a mess. Seems like this development was likely spearheaded architecture-front and not from the user-front. We don't buy 11 books for 11 chapters.

I haven't found a straightforward solution, maybe there are some workarounds?
  • bwiernik
    The best approach is to attach the PDF to the book item and then connect the chapter items to the book using the Related Items feature
  • naif.here
    Yes, but it is not a robust solution. It means we have to keep updating full books for every chapters. If you are using free/paid versions, this is how you clog up storage - and storage is how zotero makes money. They introduced book sections as a feature when in reality it was a shorthand to the metadata management, which in reality was a few clicks. It would have had to be a major oversight to make sense of it all.
  • adamsmith
    The basic answer to your question is that organizing items hierarchical has been talked about since Zotero's early days, so it's not like no one thought about this, but it's exceedingly difficult to overhaul the entire data model, so it has never happened. Technical debt is a very real concern.

    I'd just split up a PDF into chapters when working with book sections and annotating them; I'm not sure why that's not an option. That's how Zotero will download chapters from edited books that are available online.
  • naif.here
    One can imagine that this is a primitive problem with these tools, but it also means that just because a problem is old or worked around doesn't signify it as resolved. I take your point on technical limitations, but such a core aspect from the user end that ignoring this is a bit unfortunate for several versions. Perhaps the built-in annotations made this pop up more.

    I've been splitting lately to manage space and data, but doesn't always make sense when you work with more than half the book. Beyond the data management complexities, it seems against the economic interest to prioritise this either.
  • adamsmith
    It's pretty clear this isn't driven by a desire to maximize storage use by users (it'd be a very ineffective way of doing that) and making unfounded claims that it is is frankly rather obnoxious.
  • naif.here
    1. It is a key source of upkeep, and it's a logical move to have the platform running - it is neither an 'unfounded claim' nor an accusation but a mere suspicion that this may work against it.
    2. You don't need to engage at all - you voluntarily joined in on a high horse to preach how others have figured this out and then proceeded to add nothing to this.
  • iagogv
    edited May 14, 2025
    I would remark the main comment point
    2. Most of these pdfs already have demarcations of page numbers - why can't we designate those specific page numbers.
    So, wouldn't be possible to add an item attachment page number to the database (would be an attachment field), so opening that attachment first time would open at that page (and next times it would be open at the last page read, as always...)?
    And ideally, there would be also a button to return always to the default page...
  • iagogv
    BTW, related: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/120687/feature-request-internal-links-to-bookmarks-and-highlights (as talking also about links to specifics parts of a document)
  • naif.here
    @iagogv:
    yes exactly, this shouldn't need massive overhaul to bind them within page numbers. The create book section only cuts down just one step from copying book + changing document type. Now that there's annotations, more relevant functionality would make it useful.

    The other link you shared also points to a similar frustration. The silence on posts like these has been unfortunate, but hope that there is a response or update sooner than later.
  • jandavid
    FWIW, the main use case for having separate entries for chapters of books is edited collections with chapters by different authors. And since these are rarely meant to be read cover to cover, extracting PDFs of each chapter as @adamsmith suggests is the way to go (nowadays chapters in collections have their own individual DOIs anyways). Then you won't even need to add the PDF of the whole book at all (or if you do, it'd just one more file, certainly not 11 times the same PDF). And it's so easy per drag and drop to extract pages from PDFs it shouldn't be that much work.
  • v4u6h4n
    edited 2 days ago
    @adamsmith

    Just curious if the transition to annotations becoming their own nested items/objects makes implementing books with book sections any easier? Just asking because having to add sometimes dozens of sections from a single book is one of the few laborious tasks remaining with Zotero.
  • adamsmith
    I don't think so, no.
    But while I understand why nested chapters help for organizing and citing, it's unclear to me what you think they would add over the existing "Create book section" in terms of adding book sections to Zotero
  • v4u6h4n
    Although I would like the organisational benefits that would come with nesting, my main motivation is actually to make reading and annotating more simply and efficient.

    Half of the time I only need a single book section in a book, and just get that single section, in which case the current system is perfectly fine.

    However the other half of the time, I need multiple and in some cases most sections of a work. Usually I have some idea of which sections they might be, but of course that is still often subject to having actually read them first, so half the time I just get the entire book, start reading and then add separate book section items when I run into a section that is noteworthy, and then switch to reading and annotating those book sections items instead of the whole book item.

    It works, but I just find the whole process quite clunky compared to pretty much everything else I do on zotero. I just imagine being able to add a book item with book sections nested in it would really simplify the process so that I don't need to stop every time I find a section that I need to cite, and perform a bunch of file and administrative operations in zotero so I can continue reading and annotating.

    Obviously not the end of the world, just a friction point in my work flow :-)
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