Group Library and My Library Interconnections

briandk
I'm a graduate student, I love Zotero, and I'm using it to generate a literature reiew reading list in consultation with some faculty. I don't know how many people do that, but I think it's not a particularly atypical use case. Now, Zotero documentation says:
Note that group libraries are wholly separate from My Library. Any items dragged into them are separate copies and changes to the items will not be reflected in your own copy of the item until you drag it back into My Library.
So here's my problem: my faculty and I are constantly updating and adding to/modifying my reading list as we go along. So consider the following scenarios, where M is My Library, A is my Advisor's library, and G is the group's library:

Four Possible Use Cases, and Why I'm a Sad Panda in All of Them

  1. I add 10 files to M. I copy them to G. My advisor says "You should also read these 25 exhaustingly dense papers I just found. I'm adding them to G!" He downloads the files into A, and has to copy them into G. Meanwhile, how might I get just the 25 new files into M?

  2. I find a few more papers, add them to M. Then, I forget to separately copy them to G. Now, my advisor's copy of G never updates. He eventually thinks I've stopped searching the literature, gets angry, makes fun of how I dress, and I cry in fragile shame.

  3. My advisor finds crucial papers to cite that lend much-needed merit and credibility to his grant proposal. But, he's been so busy punishing me with more reading in G that he forgets to deselect G in his source pane when importing the new papers. Later, minutes before the deadline, he emails me in a panic saying "I added references to my library today that I need for this paper BUT I CAN'T FIND THEM IN MY LIBRARY. ZOTERO ATE MY PRECIOUS REFERENCES AND I HATE IT. ALSO I'M FIRING YOU FOR RECOMMENDING IT TO ME." He imported them into G instead of A, and he can't find them because he thought he imported them to A in the first place.

  4. Notice how problems 1-3 scale when another faculty member B is also using Zotero, is part of the group, and is helping me with my reading list.
I don't know a ton about the ins-and-outs of file syncing, so I'm guessing my frustration comes from a few potential sources.

Four Possible Reasons I End Up Being a Sad Panda

  1. Zotero can solve problems 1-4, but I just don't know how to leverage it to do that because I'm an ignorant lout who can't read support fora :-(

  2. Zotero can't solve problems 1-4, but many people want it to, and we're working on having it do that.

  3. Zotero fundamentally can't solve problems 1-4, or practically can't be made to given constraints on the developers.

  4. I completely misunderstand what group libraries are for, and how they're supposed to work.
  • adamsmith
    for 1. you can sort the group library by date added.

    otherwise, things are probably closest to situation 2, group functionality is going to be extended.

    Unfortunately, though, you just point out potential problems - while no one expects you to actually write code to solve them, some sense of what you would like Zotero to do would be helpful.
    e.g. for 3 I think it would be good if quick searches included group libraries.
    But I don't really know what you want to do about 2. (except for being on speaking terms with your advisor beyond the contents of your zotero library ;-)
  • wejdoane
    Brian and I have been talking about this off-list since his post and I think Adam hits on the key issues: (1) you can't fix user behavior; (2) what would solve the workflow problem?

    I think the answer to (2) is, to borrow a phrase, "what happens in a group library stays in the group library". That is, to focus less on trying to keep ones local library in sync with ones group library and more on having everything relevant to a group project in the group library.

    The problem that leaves, then, is that search currently only searches the currently selected library (again, as Adam points out, and Brian and I had decided independently).

    Since the searches are, as I understand them, SQL SELECTs, is there some technical reason that the search MUST be (or should be, for performance reasons) limited to a single library? I don't see why, since all item records are already in the same table.

    -Wil
  • dstillman
    Briefly: I've noted this elsewhere, but links between items dragged from one library to another are tracked behind the scenes. These links aren't used for anything at the moment (other than to prevent repeated drags), but they likely will allow the merging of data between libraries in the future. But the specifics of how this should work get messy quickly.
    is there some technical reason that the search MUST be (or should be, for performance reasons) limited to a single library?
    It's mostly a UI issue. The quick search always shows you a subset of the items in the current view (as does the tag selector), so showing items from different libraries would diverge quite a bit from that convention.
  • wejdoane
    edited February 18, 2010
    I figured out the current semantics of dragging (both within a library and across libraries), understand basically how the behind the scenes tracking is being used, and agree completely on the inherent messiness. I don't know that this will ever be a clean process, since every logical possibility is the desired outcome for some subgroup of users.


    But isn't the subsetting convention for the UI already broken with the "Group Libraries" entry in the library panel? It seems to be non-functional and only serves to visually separate "my library" from the group libraries.


    Even with extensions.zotero.report.combineChildItems set to true, [core point: "Group Libraries" doesn't behave like other selectable items in the same panel -wejd] entries from the (possibly multiple) group libraries don't display when "Group Libraries" is selected. Also, a quick search performed while "Group Libraries" is selected returns a null set, forcing you to search each group library separately.


    Right now, the hierarchy is presented as


      My Library
        collection1
        collection2
      Group Libraries
    And your point seems to be that there's no container for {My Library, Actual Group Library, Another Group Library} that one could select so that the quickSearch-searches-selected-container scheme holds... so... is there a reason not to refactor the hierarchy? 

    Libraries
      My Library
        collection1
        collection2
      Actual Group Library
        collection3
        collection4
      Another Group Library
    And differentiate the private and group libraries using the icon -- brown box for private and stacked people for EACH group library. (or some other meaningful icon... globe brown box, e.g.)


    That way, selecting "Libraries" would allow for a UI-consistent search of all libraries, private and group, and non-functional "Group Libraries" would disappear.


    -Wil

  • dstillman
    But isn't the UI already broken with the "Group Libraries" entry in the library panel?
    Well, Group Libraries is a heading, not a library. It happens to display an empty middle pane, but that's just the default view.
    Even with extensions.zotero.report.includeAllChildItems set to true
    That pref is for reports only. It has nothing to do with anything else.
    And your point seems to be that there's no container for {My Library, Actual Group Library, Another Group Library} that one could select so that the quickSearch-searches-selected-container scheme holds... so... refactor the hierarchy!
    I wasn't suggesting that there wasn't a solution, and your proposed one is perfectly reasonable. I was simply explaining why quick search doesn't currently show results from other libraries when you have one library selected.
  • wejdoane
    Sorry, yes... I picked the wrong pref. I seem to recall there was a tweak at one point that toggled aggregation of items upward when viewing their parent containers.

    I think we agree on the semantics of "Group Libraries" (I'm pointing out that it doesn't behave like a library, and you're saying it's not a library... but it *is* a selectable container that doesn't seem to behave like the other selectable containers in that panel: libraries and collections) -- I don't know of any other headings that are used in that panel, off the top of my head... are there any?

    I also didn't mean to suggest that you were claiming it to be intractable. I just wanted to offer one version of what seems like a consistent scheme that maintains the UI-patterns already used in Zotero and ask, is this a way out?

    -Wil
  • dstillman
    I picked the wrong pref. I seem to recall there was a tweak at one point that toggled aggregation of items upward when viewing their parent containers.
    recursiveCollections — but, yeah, that doesn't change the (non-)behavior of "Group Libraries".
    I don't know of any other headings that are used in that panel, off the top of my head... are there any?
    Nope. It's new, which is also why it's non-functional.
    I just wanted to offer one version of what seems like a consistent scheme that maintains the UI-patterns already used in Zotero and ask, is this a way out?
    I'll let others comment, but I don't see any obvious problems with it. It would of course mean the loss of a distinction between the personal library and group libraries, and the loss of the ability to double-click on "Group Libraries" to get to your main groups page on the site, but those are expendable if the alternative provides much more functionality.
  • briandk
    Dan, Wil, and Adam,

    Thanks for being so attentive to this issue. I'm really happy with the way the conversation's evolved, and I'm sorry for not being more solution-minded from the start.

    I think Dan and Wil are nailing it; a change in the search behavior could benefit a lot of people, and address what was my real problem:

    If I know I had the paper in my library, I should just be able to search for it like I search for anything else.
    I'll let others comment, but I don't see any obvious problems with it.
    My vote is to try and implement an easy search pref like Wil's suggesting.
    It would of course mean the loss of a distinction between the personal library and group libraries
    I think we're finding that at present, the distinction is hard for users to grok. I'm excited for the future plans you allude to, but as a user I had no idea what already existed, like:
    the ability to double-click on "Group Libraries" to get to your main groups page on the site
    Had no clue that was a thing.
  • ajlyon
    I'm also a fan of Wil's idea for a "Libraries" supercategory-- it seems like a very clean fix to the issue raised here. I also think that it moves in the right direction-- towards the full functional equivalence of local and remote resources, personal and shared resources.
  • fbennett
    edited February 18, 2010
    I like this layout also. If all "atomic-ish" library folders are at the same nesting level, it's easy to grasp and to explain.
  • migugg
    +1 for Wil's idea. logic and simple.
  • Bionatsci
    +1 - simple, intuitive and elegant.
  • ghiozzo
    This thread started by briandk hits addresses many problems that we experience in our zotero-user group, with some frustration for people involved.
    +1 for the proposed solution
  • Heckscher
    I was not aware that "links between items dragged from one library to another are tracked behind the scenes". That has all sorts of potential. Would it be possible just for users to see that field -- and therefore sort or select on it? That would allow a great deal of user-defined flexibility in deciding how to treat own vs group entries: you might want to import group items that did not originate in your library, for instance.

    Similarly, it would be helpful to be able to see the field for "Added by," which is visible in the online version of group libraries but not the desktop version. Then one could import records added by others. (-- I'm thinking there may be a tricky way to do this by sorting on "Added by" in the online library; selecting all the ones by a given contributor; copying them to a temporary collection; syncing; importing that collection into My Library; and deleting the temporary collection. But that seems pretty clunky!)
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