Newbie - Multiple Users share one Zotero library

Hi,
I'm quite new to Zotero and we are looking for a good solution for literature handling in my university department. I understand that Zotero with Sync will provide a shared Zotero library for multiple users via the Zotero server. Where is this server hosted? On the internet or in the local network? Is there just one login to it or can it handle e.g. Windows Vista user logins?

Thanks in advance,
martin
  • Please search for more information, but here is a summary:

    The Zotero sync server is on the internet, currently hosted by GMU. It uses your Zotero forums username and password, and there is no choice for alternative AUTH. There are no plans to make a version that you can run on your own server at this time. This server syncronizes the database content, but not your files. You can sync the files over a WebDAV server of your choosing; GMU does not provide a service for this, but you can self-host or use third-party services (free or commercial). Different WebDAV servers use different AUTH mechanisms.

    Currently, the sync server works for one username only. Multiple people can share a username now, of course. And there are plans to support groups of multiple users.
  • Hi Guys, have their been any updates on this matter?

    I work for a professor who asked me to create a database of all his citations. I've done that, and now need to figure out the best way to transfer it to him. Ideally I would like him to be able to open the library and be able to sync with Zotero with his own user name and password, rather than being stuck with the one I originally selected to create the database. Another professor I support wants me to do the same thing for her, so eventually I'd like to get this transferred to Professor A, wipe out my library, and then rebuild a new one for Professor B.

    Any advice would be greatly appreciated...thank you!
  • edited November 3, 2010
    My suggestion: setup a zotero group for each professor (probably one ideally based on the primary topic of interest for the bib, so that it can expanded over time as needed), add them to the groups and give them administration rights, and put the references you gather for them only in those groups (since you seem to note care about them yourself). That way they have access to those references without having to do anything.

    Aside: I don't know about anyone else, but I'm struck that the groups feature has not been as successful as I'd expected.
  • Thank you very much, bdarcus, for the reply and suggestion. I've gone ahead and created a group, but I don't see how to add any of the things in my library to its library. I looked through the online documentation on groups and don't see anything there, or within Zotero. The group I created is not showing up in the window that contains 'My Library', though it does show up on my Zotero profile on the web page.

    How would I move items into this group library? Thanks in advance!
  • you need to sync first - then your library will show up in your local copy of Zotero and you can drag and drop references
  • Thanks, guys, I should have thought of that...it's working now. I'd like to delete my personal library since everything is now in this group library...is that safe, or do I need to keep a copy of everything in my personal library as well?

    Just to clarify, the reason I want to empty my library is so I can build a new one for a new professor without having to drag each new reference to a specific folder or whatnot. If that's a bad idea/workflow/whatever, please feel free to let me know.

    Thanks again!
  • it's safe, but yeah, that seems like a bad workflow -
    why not start doing that in a new group right away?
  • Thanks adamsmith, I guess I just didn't quite get how the groups work. I can apparently just highlight the desired library once and then when I import it goes straight to that library (and not the others!).

    For some reason I thought I would have to do a lot of tagging or dragging/dropping to keep everything separate, but it's about as easy as can be. I do think the documentation could be improved a little bit, though, and wonder if the group feature isn't as puzzling to other newbies as it originally seemed to me. Anyway, looks golden now, and I really appreciate all the feedback and assistance. Thank you!
  • Aside: I don't know about anyone else, but I'm struck that the groups feature has not been as successful as I'd expected.
    It's really easy to point to quite a few probable reasons for this. Basically the Groups user interface (both on the web and in the client) has seen no fundamental changes from the time it was first introduced, and it has had some huge problems from the start. Here's just the most important problems that spring to mind:

    Zotero Groups ties you to ZFS. While this is no problem for some, it is a problem for very many scientific organizations, whose policies on data sharing often simply forbid storing data on outside servers. The Zotero Server code has not materialized in any mass-usable form yet.

    Web interface is virtually unusable. There is no sorting. It is not possible to customize the displayed columns. Various pages make no distinction between items and attachments (confusing). The Group homepage is ill-organized. It takes too many clicks to get to individual items and to attachments. It takes way too many clicks to add members to closed groups, whereas this is one of the most common actions for group admins. Group Settings page is ill-organized (for example, why is Transfer ownership so prominent whereas Inviting new members is hidden under a "Send new invitations" text link at the bottom (and yes, in a hacked place at the top)).

    Client interface could be much improved too. Why are collections expanded by default? This makes the interface unusable if you have more than a few groups. Plus it's impossible to collapse all subcollections at once — and expanding all groups after collapsing them at the "Group Libraries" level makes all subcollections expand again. Groups cannot be sorted in the client (and how they are sorted in the first place is unclear). Dragging and dropping collections is awkward/impossible. Even though from the start on there has been talk of an invisible "link" between local items and group items, there is no actually still no way to keep them synced: changes made in a group have no effect on the local item nor vice versa.

    I say this all as a user of the Groups feature. It has taken me a lot of energy to explain all these quirks to colleagues and collaborators, and several of them have chosen to stay away from the Groups feature because of these quirks. It would be great if the web interface could finally be overhauled with some attention to usability and accessibility, and if the client UI could be improved.
  • Bruce and Mark are right to note that the web interface and groups systems are somewhat underwhelming, especially when you consider that the social/collaborative features of Zotero have been a stated development priority for the past development cycle or two.

    And we know why-- there aren't enough developers to go 'round. I'd encourage people to donate to CHNM to hire more developers, but I wonder if that has much chance of improving the situation.

    Maybe someone will indeed set up some Zotero bounties for some of these issues? I imagine that users would pony up $500-1000 dollars for some of the medium-sized issues, if the bounties were advertised. And there must be some people with the time to work on them.

    My hope is that the web interface has been frozen because there is a new interface to join Zotero Everywhere waiting in the wings; there really would have to be a much more flexible interface if it is to make the online experience roughly equivalent to the plugin/standalone one.
  • Web interface improvements are indeed underway—many of them (such as sorting) are dependent on API improvements, which are being made along with new API functionality being added for Zotero Everywhere.
  • edited November 3, 2010
    And we know why-- there aren't enough developers to go 'round. I'd encourage people to donate to CHNM to hire more developers, but I wonder if that has much chance of improving the situation.
    With all due respect, that's not the only, nor to my mind the best, way to solve this problem. The other is encourage a more robust open source community of web developers that are willing and able to contribute their labor to improving features such as this.
  • With all due respect, that's not the only, nor to my mind the best, way to solve this problem. The other is encourage a more robust open source community of web developers that are willing and able to contribute their labor to improving features such as this.
    I certainly agree. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened yet either. I could hazard some more guesses as to why, but it hasn't. The user community has generally stayed away from the larger projects; with the notable exception of Frank Bennett's work (and your own work in designing CSL), most work has been in translator, style, and plugin development. These are all somewhat easier to take on.

    [An alternate explanation is that plugins, styles, and translators have a shorter and more transparent route to the user community / release, so they provide a good way for user-developers to scratch their itches; immediate gratification, as it were.]

    Anyway, I do think that we are seeing a more healthy developer community today than when I started to use Zotero two short years ago in fall 2008, so we're moving in the right direction.
  • Aside: I don't know about anyone else, but I'm struck that the groups feature has not been as successful as I'd expected.
    I don't know if I agree, but then I'm a skeptic. Groups have generally not be overwheming on any literature service. Are they really any less successful here than on CiteULike or Mendeley or others?
  • @noksagt: don't really know. I'm just struck that I've started a few groups that in theory should have broad interest, but the enrollment is very low, and the participation even lower. Admittedly, part of this is likely that the community of people in those areas who use Zotero at all is quite low. But I did find using the groups feature in a class of mine last year somewhat awkward. One little reason is that notes are not designed for groups (you can't have a threaded conversation, for example).
  • Zotero groups have worked out very well here for individual supervision of writing projects. They haven't worked out as well (yet) in classroom environments. The web interface is probably the main issue; students here don't all have personal machines, so although Zotero has some buzz behind it and our local base of users is increasing, we can't yet assume that everyone in a class has regular access to a client-side view of content.
  • I'm trying to do the same thing as jgeorgia, and can't figure out how after reading this thread...but I may have made a critical error early on. I have a large personal library in Zotero and when I started a new research job I made created collections within that library specifically for the professor I'm working with. Now I want to move her materials to a group library, but the sync command seems to be library-wide, and she doesn't need everything I have in the whole library. Is there any way to move just a collection into a group library? (Is this actually a different question than jgeorgia's? I find the groups feature somewhat baffling.)
  • emcleary:
    1. Set up a group
    2. Create - manually - collections with the same name (same name isn't necessary - I'm just thinking it makes sense) as the ones in your library that you want to share in the group
    3. Go to the collections in your library, selects all (ctrl+a) items and drag them to the corresponding collection in the group
    4. sync
    5. Set up a Zotero account for your professor and invite her/him to join the group.
    6. Have her/him sync.
  • Ah. Thanks, very clear. I think one of my problems was that I set up a generic identity on Zotero groups for the purposes of moving stuff from my personal library to the shared group library (thinking it would be better to have a group name and group login detached from our personal names), but then couldn't sync from my computer to the zotero server. Once I went back to being just me the syncing worked.
  • I keep dragging and dropping as you say per this thread to our group collection, but each time the (+) sign appears, I've been bounced back to my individual library... any suggestions?
  • Ahhh, got it. For others confused this way, the client interface is where you drag and drop, not on the webpage. Use the new group library tab and then drag to the group there, not from the client interface to the group page online.
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