Complex locators (& multivolume again)

Wondering if there is any chance of getting Zotero to render anything like these:

(Note)
John Doe, The Doe Saga, London, 1933-1935, 6 vols., vol. 1, The Rise of the Does, p. 33, note 4.

or even with the date of a specific volume:
John Doe, The Doe Saga, London, 1933-1935, 6 vols., vol. 1, The Rise of the Does, 1934, p. 33, note 4.

John Doe, "The Does and Their Dough", in Dough Studies, vol. 12, 1933, p. 23-45, on pages 25-26.
(i.e. pages of the complete article, plus reference to specific pages).

I gather that for multivolume works you can only type volume and page together into the "volume" box, but then you lose things like automatically localised labels for both vol. and p.
I was also hoping one could format volume numbers so as to have, say, roman numerals when quoting books, vs arabic for periodicals; but then page numbers would also become arabic [corr.: I meant roman], which is no good.

As the editor of a scholarly journal, I use these niceties every day. French citation traditions, you see, are somewhat less compact than English norm ("1:16-17" is unheard of, apart from Bible studies maybe).

Also wondering, does/could Zotero check "volume" against "number-of-volumes", or "page" against "number-of-pages" or, more usefully, against the range of pages of an article? Just to help prevent typos.
  • edited November 10, 2010
    No for 1) and 2) - the problem there would be the volume title, which doesn't exist in Zotero, as well as separate dates, which Zotero doesn't support either.
    I gather that for multivolume works you can only type volume and page together into the "volume" box, but then you lose things like automatically localised labels for both vol. and p.
    here I don't follow. Which "Volume" box? I'd just use the "volume" field in Zotero and then the "page" field in the plugin.
    John Doe, "The Does and Their Dough", in Dough Studies, vol. 12, 1933, p. 23-45, on pages 25-26.
    is not problem - just put in 23-45 as the page-range in Zotero and then type 25-26 in the word plugin - or am I missing something - you seem to want to do all of that with a locator - why?
    I was also hoping one could format volume numbers so as to have, say, roman numerals when quoting books, vs arabic for periodicals; but then page numbers would also become arabic, which is no good.
    I'm not super familiar with csl 1.0 - but the old csl allows you to test for
    if locator="volume"
    etc. - I'd be surprised if that isn't possible anymore.
    Also wondering, does/could Zotero check "volume" against "number-of-volumes", or "page" against "number-of-pages" or, more usefully, against the range of pages of an article? Just to help prevent typos.
    I think that causes more problems than it solves - apart from the fact that CSL currently does no such checking for anything, my main concern would be that this would raise flags whenever a user does something unexpected with the page/# of pages fields and that seems very undesirable to me.
  • edited November 10, 2010
    EDIT: beaten by adamsmith by a good margin (darn phone messages). But: I don't know if I agree w.r.t. volume name. See http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2099/multivolume-books/ for discussions on nomenclature & work-arounds.
    p. 23-45, on pages 25-26.
    (i.e. pages of the complete article, plus reference to specific pages).
    Stuff like this is already possible with the word processor plugins: Your zotero item would be a book section with 23-45 and put 25-26 in the WP plugin.
  • edited November 17, 2010
    [edit: irrelevant comment. I missed the point here.]
    here I don't follow. Which "Volume" box? I'd just use the "volume" field in Zotero and then the "page" field in the plugin.
    I think MHSmith is talking about the fact that there is no number-of-pages field for "Chapter": you must use the number-of-volumes field for both nb-of-vols and nb-of-pages [e.g: "2 vol. (LXIV-853 p.)"]: then you lose automatic locator since you must hardcode them in one unique field.
  • edited November 10, 2010
    Thanks, and sorry if I am still a bit confused, being new to Z.

    Quite right, "p. 23-45, on pages 25-26" is OK w/ Z. + plugin.

    With box I meant the plugin locator field, referring to the fact that you must hard-code, e.g. in my first example, [vol.] "1, p. 33".
    And so, you can't get a roman numeral for the volume w/o contaminating the page number at the same time.

    And yes, now I see the problem with the check-against idea (not that it would have been that useful anyway).

    Cheers everybody.
  • yes, but why can't you put in the volume in Zotero and the page in the plugin?

    @noksagt - I don't really see useful workaround for volume titles in that thread - the last issue in that thread, with the multivolume conference proceedings I think is mostly solved, but I don't really see how you'd get any of the first two examples cited above.
  • e.g.: use 'series title' for the name of the multi-volume book and 'book title' as the volume's title.
  • @adamsmith
    Well all I can have in Zotero is: John Doe, The Doe Saga, London, 1933-1935, 6 vols. — not vol. 1? Unless I enter each volume as a separate book, which is what tends to happen in library catalogues, and is a pain.

    @noksagt
    Thanks for the suggestion? Actually I was considering that workaround, but it feels a bit drastic. The output in my case could look like this:

    John Doe, The Rise of the Does, London, 1934 (id., The Doe Saga, London, 1933-1935, 6 vols), p. 33 — supposing I enter the complete information for the set in the "series" field

    or just:

    John Doe, The Rise of the Does, London, 1934 (id., The Doe Saga, 1), p. 33.

    Either of these could be an option in certain cases, but would entail (among other drawbacks) forgetting about italics for the title of the set.
  • edited November 11, 2010
    @adamsmith (continued)
    Which leads me to a further (minor) question: Z. has "vol." and "number of vols" for a book. But how do you know if "vol. 2" & "2 vols" means "vol. 2 of 2", or "vol. 2, in 2 vols"?
    Or maybe in the second case one shouldn't use vol. 2, but some other notion, such as "part 2" — although vol. 2, in 2 parts, might be more satisfactory than part 2, in 2 vols.
  • Can't you make a custom style to give the layout of volumes and italicize the titles that you want?
  • MH - you can have one entry in Zotero for each volume. Then for each volume you can enter both volume number (1 in your example) and number of volumes (6 here).

    Your second question I don't follow - it would help if you were clear about where you're adding things - Zotero or plugin? Also, I'm never quite sure if you're talking about an existing style or general possibilities - because, in general, using the volume and # of volume fields, it's very much possible to render "volume 1 of 2" or "vol.2 in to vols" etc.
  • edited November 11, 2010
    @noksagt
    Actually I am making a custom style, hence my question. Yes, I suppose I can get an italicised series title and non-italic number if the number is entered separately, in the appropriate field (which apparently isn't how libraries do it, at least from French catalogues Zotero imports the number directly into the series field).
    The order of output elements will still be a bit unusual compared to what I had in mind at first, but logical enough, and it might solve a caseor two whenever I decide I really need both titles. Thanks.

    @adamsmith
    1° — Yes, I just wondered if there was anything less unwieldy, if there isn't, then never mind. What would be the quickest way: duplicating a title and then editing vol. and date, I suppose? (in Zotero).
    2° — I mean, what are the two fields meant for, or what does it mean per se if you enter a figure into both fields (in Zotero): "volume 1 of 2" (probably) or "vol.2 in two vols"(possibly?). Or could it be used for both cases? But then, I can't see how any style could make this distinction in the output format.
    Maybe I am splitting hairs, just trying to understand the logic of Z, and I don't want to bother you all day, I now understand that the primary use is apparently for multiple entries for multivols (as in 1° above). Thanks again.
  • 1. yes - duplicate is what you want. Hierarchical items are planned, but that might be a long time.
    (catalogues: data import for some of the less common fields is not terribly consistent, yes).

    2. I think everyone understand this as "volume 1 of 2" - the existing styles certainly do as do any translators that include that information (not sure how many actually do, I'd guess Library of Congress probably does).
    That said, you can obviously hack a custom style to do whatever you want it to if needed.
  • edited November 11, 2010
    Thanks, have a nice day
  • edited November 11, 2010
    (the weather in Paris is awful)
  • edited November 11, 2010
    at least from French catalogues Zotero imports the number directly into the series field
    Example URLs welcome. Many OPACs probably include this in the title & we can't do much about it. But some might differentiate it in the MARC record as a special type of subtitle (so we might be able to do this better).

    Re your second point (as adamsmith notes): vol 1 of 2. 'Volume' refers to the same hierarchical level in both fields and there is no further breakdown of a volume into sub-numbered parts (e.g. 'issue' in the journal article type).
  • see e.g.: www.sudoc.abes.fr
    Librarians cram everything they can about the series into the series field. Where you woud expect
    Series: "Les publications de Scriptorium"
    Number: "9"

    you get
    Series: "(Les publications de Scriptorium. - Bruxelles : Erasme : puis Centre d'étude des manuscrits, 1947 -... ; 9)"
    and possibly the ISSN thrown in too.
  • edited November 11, 2010
    @MHSmith: I do not understand the problem with your example. "9" is the series number, not the nb of vols.
    Broadly speaking, I have often the need to clean up a bit metadata... I think you can't avoid it for some catalogues.
  • edited November 11, 2010
    I know it's the series number, just saying that the series field is usually full of junk (or to be more precise: stuff that is either of no use for citations, or should be entered elsewhere) and I am afraid it is entered like that even in MARC format.
  • Ok.
    I agree that some translators could be (slightly) improved (e.g.: sudoc). However, what is "of no use for citations" can be different according to styles + zotero is much more than a citation tool...
  • Actually, such data is often in MARC subfields, so it might be possible to make changes to select only the real series data. Of course, some databases do just provide low quality data. Garbage in, garbage out.
  • Just to complete, as I've developped the zotero translator for the sudoc, the problem with this catalog is that, even if the data are stored using unimarc, there's no way to get an unimarc view of the data, and on screen, they are mixed into one unique field for the "collection" information. I think they use an algorithm taking datas from the subfields (see another view of the sample record : http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb35018645t/UNIMARC ; volume number is in 225$v.

    It should be possible to developp an ISBD parser to extract informations from these fields ...
  • edited November 20, 2010
    Somewhat unorthodox workaround for my first example (first post), using flip-flop italics:

    Title field:
    The Doe Saga, <i>London, 1933-1935, 6 vols., vol. 1,</i> The Rise of the Does

    Or just
    The Doe Saga, <i>1,</i> The Rise of the Does
    if I decide to use place and date for the only volume I am citing
    (output: John Doe, The Doe Saga, 1, The Rise of the Does, London, 1934).

    Thank heavens for rich text markup!
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