Libraries and keywords

Vranicoff
I notice the checkbox beneath the listed keywords to the lower left of the screen says "Display all tags in this library" and that the "My Library" box has a disclosure icon. These points combined lead me to believe that we can have multiple libraries by which to organize our keywords otherwise why not just say "Display all tags" and not bother with a library supercategory with a disclosure which would be otherwise pointlessly indenting everything?

I have searched the Zotero site forums and documentation. All I have been able to find are some old forum discussions, the latest being from 2009. Can anyone tell me how I would go about creating a second library as implied by the screen cues I've mentioned? I am working on three very different projects and never know when I will be stumbling on information applicable to any of them while perusing the web. Being able to just select the appropriate library upon discovery would be useful. I also really like the idea of being able to organize my keywords by project.

Or am I misreading the screen cues and this topic actually died in 2009?

--Steve
  • adamsmith
    groups are separate libraries, thus the "this library" with the checkbox, otherwise no, you can't have multiple libraries.
    You can have three main collections with multiple subcollections, though.
  • Vranicoff
    Thanks for the clarification. Onward with the new info it is then...

    --Steve
  • mark
    Note that if you use collections, you are already "able to just select the appropriate collection upon discovery". Items added while a collection is selected will be added to that collection. (And also in your "My library" root, 'tis true.)

    Have you thought about possibly overlapping sources? Sources that are so basic that they belong in all three, or in two of the three projects? With items in separate libraries, you would have to have duplicates. With collections there is no such problem: items can be in multiple collections.
  • Vranicoff
    Mark. I definitely see your point about collections being readily available and hence did not press that issue. You also have a valid point about overlapping keywords, but in my case many of my keywords won't overlap. My programming references with keywords like "PERL" are quite unlikely to overlap my creative writing project with words like "Natural" and if they did, I might not actually want them to.

    Further investigation has shown that I can get the functionality I'm looking for by just unchecking the "Display all tags in this library" box and seeing only collection specific tags. Sorry if that was overly obvious, but I came for help because I am trying to learn the tool and I had come to a false conclusion about being able to create multiple libraries to start with.

    One point I still don't understand is why everything needs to be indented under a "My Library" reference when there cannot be more than one library. That seems to me like some screen real estate that could be reclaimed, unless of course groups are also anchored to that top level. I'm not really interested in the groups feature so I don't know and am only guessing.

    Overall, this looks to be an excellent tools and I look forward to using it.

    --Steve

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