I was getting ready to post in the other thread, but when I finished writing what turned out to be rather long, it was closed. (Gosh, it really is long. I should probably edit it, but it's midnight and i've already spend several hours now watching videos, reading the documentation and thinking about this issue, and trying to write this reply, so I won't. sorry).--- LOL...I tried to post it and it's 1011 characters too long. So, I guess I'll post in two parts

Here is my take on what some of the issues might be.

First off, in this post I’m addressing the needs of a subset of Zotero users for whom the present documentation has proved inadequate. It works for many (some? most?), but not for others. I don’t want to come across as bashing the documentation. It worked for me. It’s great. But why doesn’t it work for others?

I think it would help if we visualized a researcher with a couple of dozen boxes of 3x5 cards who reads the tag line:

Goodbye 3x5 cards, hello Zotero.

He (or she) thinks he’s died and gone to heaven. As Colleen says “I simply want to create a bibliography for a Doctoral thesis and thought using this would be easy.”

I don’t know about Colleen in particular, but my hypothetical research simply wants, first and foremost to dump his 3x5 cards into Zotero. After all that’s what’s promised. Then he, like Colleen will begin to take advantage of the ability to make a manual bibliography, and maybe use it citations in Word…

But the starting point to getting his 3x5 cards into Zotero.

So, he loads it, then fires up the quick start guide: Which begins with automatically downloading from Amazon and saving them “in my Zotero collection”…

Now, it’s theoretically possible that this (perhaps aged, almost certainly not in a grad seminar…but I could be wrong) researcher really doesn’t use the internet much. Tolerates computers, but his 35,000 source cards, representing his life’s work, has simply gotten out of hand. Zotero to the rescue…or not.

So, this quick start, helps him not a whit. It talks about taking notes, syncing, and saved search etc. at 2:22 into the video he hears “its easy to integrate my items into any project” then its on to citations, bibliography, styles “it’s never been easier to collect, manage, cite and share your research sources... Just click the download link to start building your collection.”

But now, where did he really learn how get one of his 3x5 note cards into Zotero! Understandably, he is frustrated. He learned about lots of really cool stuff. Really incredible stuff. Everything but what he was looking for.

If he reads the rest of the quick start page, he sees:

What does Zotero do?.. Great, but how??
What kind of items are there? … Huh?
What can I do with items?...wonderful, now, if I could just get 3x5 cards into this %@#! computer.

And on to organizing into collections, tags, searches, saved searches, collecting attachments, notes, files, links & snapshots…and if he is still hanging in there, (he still hasn’t learned to do what he wants to do)…he comes to capturing items (singular or multiple)…not needed…because his references are on 3x5 cards, not internet. He already has them!
Translators…huh?
Saving a web page…what’s a web page got to do with my card file?
Add item by identifier…what’s that?

So far its all been gobblygook… so he smashes the computer and returns to his shoe boxes, I mean, “ I tried, but it just doesn’t work for me”..

Too bad. If he had read one more paragraph, he would have read about manually adding items. Just what he was looking for. But I doubt he even made it this far…and even if he did, he wouldn’t recognize it as what he needed. Too bad. Because then he would read about citing, word processor integration, and automatic bibliographies and manual bibliographies. Just what he’s looking for. But it’s buried.

Then it’s on to syncing and groups. Sighhhh. But, he persists,…he really wants to get rid of his shoe boxes. He really does want this to work.

So he continues to investigate. He goes back to the support page and finds “getting stuff into your library!” EUREKA!!!

And what greets him here? The intro talks about a variety of ways to capture, import, and archive information and files. “On this page you will learn how to collect information on books, journal articles, and websites with a single click and then easily store related PDFs, images, links, whole web pages and any other files alongside that information inside your Zotero library. The attaching files page has additional information on attachments.”

Hmmm, I can enter the info on my 3x5 cards with a single click? This sounds like the video.

And lo and behold, the next section is “automatically capture bibliographic information from the web.” And this helps me how? He says to himself.

And YES, the info IS there. Half way down the page is a section on Manually adding items. It tells him exactly what to do. And if he knew this was the magic section, he might actually study it and try and follow it. But, I doubt he will.

But he doesn’t give up…

He finds the screen cast tutorials! (note: for some reason, I can’t view the first), The second one starts, with Amazon and one click entry! (Will he watch the rest of it)? But even if he does, it still doesn’t tell him how to enter a 3x5 card into Zotero.

If he looks (and he’s getting tired of looking by now) thru the other videos:

Finding items: sorting, basic search advanced search
Managing your library: collections, tags tag selector box
Then there is “other features”… this sounds like something secondary…he can’t even figure out the basic features, will he investigate “other” features?

But, if he pages down a time or two (depending on his screen size) again, right in the middle of everything is “Manually creating items” (http://www.zotero.org/support/screencast_tutorials/manually_creating_items) …finally!

I was going to end up suggesting a video of this sort. I didn’t know it existed. It’s actually pretty good, and probably would help.

But viewing it with the eyes of my hypothetical researcher, the very first sentence I hear is “the automatic capture of web resources makes gathering resources very easy” …here we go again! But if I listen to the second half of the sentence, I’ll get my answer.

However, the only illustration is for a letter. And it is done extremely well. Slow enough and complete enough to actually follow.

But right after that it starts talking about attaching documents and taking notes. Good stuff, but I suspect not what he’s looking for at the moment. He needs to craw before he can walk, then walk before he can run.

arggem, That's 'way long, but I think you're on to something.

after reading what felt like the Moby Dick of forum posts

LOL! I'm going to take that as a compliment... I mean, Moby Dick was great literature. That is what you meant, isn't it? :)

The link to http://libguides.northwestern.edu/content.php?pid=68444&sid=621931 is good. And it might be helpful to include. But actually, there is already documentation on the Zotero site that I think would go a long ways towards helping our shoebox friends.

I think just understanding where they are coming from when they say things like "There is far to much jargon and the very basic needs of someone who has never used a system like this before are not me," "I can't get started" and "How do I enter documents?"

If we specifically pointed them these links:
http://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide#manually_adding_items

http://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_library#manually_adding_items

http://www.zotero.org/support/screencast_tutorials/manually_creating_items

It would bring what they need to the foreground, and it might be enough. At least until something else can be developed that is aimed specifically for this issue.

Here is an example of the jargon issue: In the quick start guide it says "Metadata can then be added by hand in the right column." Maybe change that to the "the bibliographic information (called metadata in Zotero) can then be added..."

Oh, btw, my name is Gary, and I'm a he, and thanks for reading my epic novel!

when considering hypothetical users, don't assume their gender ("he").

I really didn't assume that. I wrote "he (or she)" above ( but, yeah, only once). I just find always writing he/she to be distracting to the flow of reading. I suppose s/he would work. I really was thinking inclusively (especially since Colleen was foremost in my thinking) but I personally haven't found an inclusive way of writing that's not annoying. I could have used "she" throughout, but that's not inclusive, either. I do need to work on that, though. Thanks for the reminder. I hope I didn't offend anyone. I didn't mean to. I apologize if I did.

As for the 3X5 cards, I was playing off one of the original taglines. And you are right, it's probably not very general now. But the whole context this issue is the group of people that don't fall into the general category. If adamsmith’s guestimate is anywhere near correct (1in 20), then we are indeed talking about a minority.

My hypothesis was that the group of people that found it frustrating were old school and probably had some sort of old school method that they were trying to modernize, and couldn't figure out how to do it.

I guess those that have problems will have to chime in with their issues. I'm just brainstorming, trying to figure out where the documentation has gone awry for some.

Thanks Bruce!!! Good ideas.

Colleen,

A simple installation to finished document guide guide. Interesting. I think the challenge will be to keep it simple, because Zotero really is quite powerful, and has so many bells and whistles that it will be hard not to mention them, thus "complicating" the guide.

Could you help us out here?

1. What, if anything, have you been able to accomplish?

Get Zotero installed?

Get the word-processor plugin installed?

Get references into Zotero? Manaully? One click from a website?

Cite a reference in a Word/OpenOffice doc?

Make a bibliography ?

Add notes?

Add/use tags?

Syncing with the Zotero server? (My guess is that this is beyond the basics, but i don't know what your needs are.)

Other?

2. What specifically would you like to do, that you can't figure out?

3. If you have any ideas as to what topics should be in this tutorial, please let us know.

The more we know specifically what your problems are, the more we can address them. I think everyone on the forum really wants to help you, but we aren't sure exactly what you need.

As you pick up Zotero again today, and encounter a problem, please post and let us know what you are trying to figure out, or need to do next and we'll try and help.

HOWEVER this is holiday time for some, so the traffic my be a little slow over the next few days. Please be patient.

The current page on citations is pretty fragmented, presenting people with a bunch of options that may be a little overwhelming. It might be good to have a "Authoring your Word or OpenOffice documents with Zotero" page which shows how to use the plug-ins and such?

And yes, you can't assume people who use "jargon" always know what you mean ;-)

Just throwing ideas around, but how about a series of example workflows for migrating from various citation management systems, collecting new references, then writing a document/paper.

Something like:

• If you currently use 3x5 cards start here. (talk about manually adding items and notes functionality first)
  
• If you already use another citation manager software package start here. (talk about import/export, the address bar icon and the word processor plugins first)
  
• If you have a collection of PDFs in folders on your computer start here. (talk about retrieve PDF metadata first)
  
• If you have never used references before start here. (to cater for undergraduate students doing research for the first time - just a general best practice workflow)
  

This way, the parts of the program that will be most familiar to individual users can be presented first, helping people to transition from whatever they used in the past.

I stumbled on this yesterday in the forums & though I realize the conversation has long moved on, wanted to say thanks & that I think this is definitely a useful conversation to have. I've been looking at the documentation a lot recently, both because I'm using zotero more myself and because I did a little demo last week for a group of local historians and genealogists I work with. Similar to Gary, I think I'm in a middle ground where I can (mostly) get what I need from the documentation, but also understand why others might stumble. I won't go on at length here, but a couple of quick thoughts:
-- I think the 3 x 5 method (and by extension any kind of manual note-taking system, word processed or handwritten) may not be that common among historians or humanities people in university settings, but it's still pretty common among local and avocational historians, genealogists, etc. outside the academic world, especially those whose work habits were well entrenched before, say, 1990. But that's not generally where zotero has been publicized or talked about, so I think those potential users are often somewhat invisible to the more academically-oriented constituency. (Just for the sake of example, the group I talked to last week was about a dozen people, most aged 55-75, most have published history books, several are retired eminent journalists. By my poll, none of them had ever used a citation management program and most seemed unaware that such a thing even existed.)
--For that potential group of users, zotero's functionality for keeping and exporting bibliographies and working with a word processor to generate footnotes is a key entry point. My demo of inserting a footnote literally provoked delighted gasps from the audience. I'm confident that if they become users, they'll eventually learn and benefit from the other capabilities, but that's the feature that sparks the immediate recognition that this might be worth the trouble of learning something new and slightly intimidating.
Just my 2 cents. I don't spend much time in the forum, but (obviously) have an interest in this topic, so please feel free to point me to other similar threads or more up-to-date conversations.