Upgrade StorageCreate blank entry from stand-alone attachment
It would be great to have a right-click option for stand-alone attachments that would "create new blank entry for this item"--you select it, and your stand-alone attachment is now attached to the new blank entry.
Reason for this request: I have created links to a large number of files (pdfs and docs) in the folder that serves as a repository for academic and other articles in my Documents folder. Many of these produce no results (or false results) when I attempt to Retrieve metadata for PDF. If I could right-click and select this new feature, I'd have the attachment all of a sudden attached; if I were viewing the file with Zotero, I could then begin entering data into the Info section.
Currently, this task requires creating a new, blank entry, then searching down in the links for the stand-alone item, then dragging it onto the new blank entry.
Reason for this request: I have created links to a large number of files (pdfs and docs) in the folder that serves as a repository for academic and other articles in my Documents folder. Many of these produce no results (or false results) when I attempt to Retrieve metadata for PDF. If I could right-click and select this new feature, I'd have the attachment all of a sudden attached; if I were viewing the file with Zotero, I could then begin entering data into the Info section.
Currently, this task requires creating a new, blank entry, then searching down in the links for the stand-alone item, then dragging it onto the new blank entry.
Regarding 'retrieve metadata for PDF' -- I notice that in this "retrieve" process, as well as in the ISBN - lookup (add item by identifier), Zotero will sometimes import an incorrect reference. Further, when looking up items on Google scholar in my browser, I see that there are often multiple entries for (more or less) the same item--often the second or third is the more appropriate choice, having the complete title, the correct item type, etc. I wonder if, in cases where Zotero is forced to choose among multiple options, it might be possible to give the user the opportunity to select the correct option?
It would also be useful to allow the user to accept or reject the option that Zotero determines to be correct (ie., select none, or select a blank entry instead). As an example, MediaMonkey, a media-management program, has a well-crafted option for users who seek to import tags, album covers, etc., for an album in their digital collection--they can click through various versions of "Exile on Main Street," for instance, to find the one with the largest album art, the correct "limited edition" with additional songs, etc.
If so this could form the basis of a rule for whether to show a manual selection box (e.g. scores within x% of the top score, up to y results in total, are shown).
Thanks, kithairon
It would be great to have this feature in zotero!
Also, I second JonEP's request for a semi-interactive Retrieve Metadata function--have it bring up what it found for approval, or choice between two options, and if it can't find anything, allow manual entering of fields (and trying again based on that). Sometimes I don't know which PDFs will have enough to be picked up by Zotero, but many have the ISBN right in the title, for example--if I could just type that into the proper box when Retrieve Metadata fails, and have that populate the rest, it would be great. At the moment I have to, 1, check if it picks it up, 2, if it doesn't, create a new item by manually typing the ISBN, 3, move the PDF to the new item to be an attachment, and 4, rename the PDF based on parent metadata.
Oh, also - it seems like Retrieve Metadata should also automatically rename the PDF, but it doesn't...
I think in the future it would be better to not disable some function on the grounds of some other functionality being planned that'll take care of it when that other functionality turns out to take over a year to actually materialize. In other words, if PDFs had not been excluded from the "Create Parent item from selected item" option in the first place, this issue would have been moot, less energy would have been spent on it, and we would have been the happier for it.
Now nothing happens when metadata retrieval fails, and the user is left with a PDF for which in most cases s/he does want to create a parent item. And for over a year now that has been an unnecessary impediment, because if I understand you right PDFs could easily have been included in the Create parent item option.
To be clear, by 'functionality that takes over a year to materialize' in my earlier post I was referring to the merge of the PDF metadata retrieval and Create new parent item functions that you announced in your July 20th, 2009 comment in this thread.
Please, at least enable Create parent item for selected item for PDFs just as for other standalone attachments.
Just trust us when we say it would come in handy as long as the PDF metadata search is not perfect. (Or read the explanations above, including my constructive criticism.) It is painful having the option for non-PDFs but not for PDFs.
I'm in strong agreement with others that there should be context-dependent choices for "retrieve metadata" both for manual confirmation (or 'confirm all') of the results, and a followup option for items that came up with incorrect or null metadata retrieval. I'd also really like to be able to set PubMed as my default metadata retrieval source--it's by far the best-curated metadata in my field.
However, in my case it should never give up on a file since I have manually over the years tagged all PDFs with the necessary metadata about author and title and bibliographic reference. It is all there, in the PDFs, on my computer. Why is this not used as a first attempt to populate the database record?
The priorities should be:
1) Use metadata from the PDF file (if available)
2) Make a look-up in some database
3) Make an entry with the name of the file and link this to the file
Any ideas of when this feature can be added?
Thanks a million!