annotated bibliography

This probably replicates the notes and tags request, but right now Zotero will not print annotations of bibliographical material. It would help for preparing syllabi and reading lists for grad students.
«1
  • Has anyone come up with a solution for this problem yet? Suppose I have 30 articles in my database and I have 5 notes for each article. I can highlight them all and have Zotero generate an HTML report but this has two problems:
    1. The bibilographic info is not formatted in a standard style (instead all info is displayed)
    2. I am not sure how to preserve the nice HTML layout when pasting this into word (I suspect there is an easy workaround for this)

    I can highlight the items and have Zotero generate a bibliography, however this has one major problem -
    1. The notes are not listed in full (just the first line from each note)

    I see a handful of people have requested this functionality over the last couple of years. Any suggestions?

    Thanks
  • Hi,

    New to this product and would like to know ... so is there any easy way to produce an Annotated Bibliography with Zotero? This aspect does not appear to be very user friendly.

    Thank you
  • I would also like to say that the feature of an annotated bibliography would be great. Maybe with the 1.5 or 2.0 update?

    Cheers!
  • El mismo aqui. I'm working on a project right now that asks for an annotated bibliography without a paper to bibliograph. Being able to generated an annotated bibliography entirely from Zotero resources (the annotation consisting of a special "annotation" field, perhaps) without having to generate citations would be really helpful.
  • edited February 21, 2009
    Take a look at the "Chicago Manual of Style (Annotated Bibliography)" style here: http://www.zotero.org/styles You can use it to do what you want if you enter your annotations in the extra field. This is a temporary workaround until the ticket for the annotated bibliography export option is closed.

    See also instructions on modifying any style to generate annotated bibliographies using the abstract field for annotations.
  • Sorry to be dim here, but what is the 'extra field' in the "Chicago Manual of Style (Annotated Bibliography)"? I've installed this style but can't seem to manipuate it or the info tab to add any extra field, and it seems to produce the same type of bibliography as the CMS author date option. Am I doing something wrong?
  • Sorry to be dim here, but what is the 'extra field'
    The field at the bottom of the Info tab that's literally called "Extra".
  • Many thanks. Obviously far more straightforward that I expected. The CMS annotated bibliography works too now.

    Very helpful.
  • I'm coming to this conversation late but would also love some style (preferably APA) to have a "with annotations" bibliography version which would include abstracts. I'm trying to find the instructions for modifying styles mentioned in the post by erazlogo above on February 21, but that link just goes to the same place as the link for the ticket mentioned in the same post. I'm not at all sure I'd be successful in modifying any style but I'd like to give it a try if I could find good instructions! Thanks.
  • http://www.zotero.org/support/csl_simple_edits
    is the general guide,

    What you want to do is to put all the way to the bottom, just before
    </layout>

    the lines
    <text variable="abstract" prefix="
    "/>

    including the line break between the quotation marks
  • edited January 27, 2010
    I've made an MLA style incorporating adamsmith's code which uses the abstract field to generate the annotation text for a MLA style annotated bibliography(you're welcome ENG122 students).

    You can download it here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019097/mlaannotated.csl

    Just drag and drop the file into firefox to install it; not that I expect you to trust me but I promise it's not a virus or anything! It's simply the original mla.csl with adamsmith's code added.

    I recommend some devs add this to svn because I won't be keeping the file up forever. I'm too busy/lazy(whichever you prefer) to add it myself!

    EDIT:
    I've cleaned up the original a bit and added the ability to use the "extra" field as a sponsor which is separated by a comma from the publication date. I've also added a period after the abbreviated month.

    Here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019097/mlaannotated.csl

    Sample:
    Mook, Nate. “Mass. Finalizes Plan to Drop MS Office.” Betanews. Betanews, Inc., 23 Sep. 2005. Web. 27 Jan. 2010.
    The Massachussetts state government has made the decision to move away from proprietary document formats based on the reccomendation of its IT Advisory Board. Instead, they will be implementing the OpenDocument format for all government related documents in the future. Microsoft expresses their disappointment of the decision in a letter to Massachussetts CIO Peter Quinn.
    This is a shining example of change in support of Free and Open Source Software. The fact that the state of Massachussetts recognizes the benefits to using F/OSS lends much credibility to my argument.

    Here's the same thing only without annotation: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019097/mlasponsor.csl

    Sample:
    Mook, Nate. “Mass. Finalizes Plan to Drop MS Office.” Betanews. Betanews, Inc., 23 Sep. 2005. Web. 27 Jan. 2010.
  • Is it possible to generated an APA 6th Edition annotated bibliography with Zotero? I've read the thread but don't see what I'm looking for, or maybe the jargon and instructions are beyond my level.

    Thanks very much.
  • If by annotated you mean including the abstract, this is the crucial information:

    http://www.zotero.org/support/csl_simple_edits
    is the general guide,

    What you want to do is to put all the way to the bottom, just before
    </layout>

    the lines
    <text variable="abstract" prefix="
    "/>

    including the line break between the quotation marks
    Let me know what is unclear.
  • Hi - thanks. That's way beyond my level of expertise. I was hoping for something where I could choose whether I wanted a regular biblio or an annotated biblio that included the abstract notes. I don't know how to do the programming you're talking about.

    Still love the software and am appreciative of it every day.
  • you'll need a separate style:
    go here
    http://gist.github.com/374729
    download the style by right-clicking on "Raw" at the top right and
    "Save LInk as..."
    you'll have a file called apa-annotated.csl
    drag and drop it to any open Firefox Window and it will install.

    Once installed you can select between Annotated American Psych...
    and the regular style.

    Btw. You should have more confidence - the instructions above for making slight modifications to styles are not for programmers - they're written in a way that _anyone_ can follow them (or at least we try to write them that way)- it's just a question of not getting scared.
  • Okay, great! That works. Thanks a lot!
  • By the way, I looked over the annotated style from github and compared it to the original. Now I think I have a somewhat better understanding of what you're talking about.
  • Just noticed this one in the forums. I've gone for a web application based approach to generate annotated bibliographies available here: http://github.com/singingfish/zotero-browser (see the README file for requirements, but there's only one firefox extension that needs to be installed).

    At present it works with firefox version 3.5 but not version 3.6 until some upstream bugs are fixed. The advantage of my approach is that it prints out the notes, and related items - it's kind of like an improvement to the built in Zotero report. You'll want Zotero's default citation output style to be one that doesn't print out an abstract though.
  • This worked for me! I've spent the last year creating annotated bibliographies by hand, because it always seemed quicker than figuring out how to do it through the different styles. I guess I'll be more proactive next time. Thanks!
  • I've uncovered a small glitch in the Chicago Annotated Bibliography style. It chokes a bit on items with URLs in them, such as web pages. The URL runs into formatting instructions to MS Word (specifically <div>) and the URL and formatting get combined into a bit of a mess.

    For instance, for the web site http://www.whatsabyte.com where I've typed a short description into the extra field, I get:

    “Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes - What Are They?,” n.d. http://www.whatsabyte.com/.<div style="text-indent:0.5in;">Web site giving some nice specific examples about how much computer storage various things, such as all the books in the Library of Congress, would occupy.
  • is that using the Word plugin or using drag&drop?
  • Using the Word Plugin with MS Word 2008 on Mac OS 10.6.6.
  • I downloaded the APA annotated style but its not adding the annotation when I generate the bibliography. Any suggestions?
  • where do you have the annotations in Zotero?
  • I put it in the notes section...I changed it the the abstract section however and that fixed it.....I think haha.
  • yeah, the style I post above uses the abstract to annotate as requested.
  • THANKS FOR THE HELP!
  • I'm trying to add MLA annotated bibliography functionality, too -- cpore's code seems to have disappeared from dropbox. Anyone know if it still exists anywhere findable? Thanks!
  • I don't think so - see my instructions above - this really isn't hard to do yourself.
  • Thanks, adamsmith -- I was cautious like evlavita. I did it, but now ALL MLA bibliographic entries are annotated -- is there any way to install this version as a separate style from default MLA?
Sign In or Register to comment.