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Creating a "Custom" Item for Zotero Library
The Zotero 7 beta has a number of item categories that one can easily access to place info into the beta Zotero 7 library. I would like to create an item for deeds. The closest item category is Patents. But deeds differ from patents in important respects and therefor needs to have its own item category. How do I create an item category for deeds that I can repeatedly use? Thank you.
Zotero does not allow you to add Item Types to the main set. If you have programming skills, you can create your own custom style and alter how it is output and/or allow it to use the Extra field to gather and output additional information. There is information about that in Zotero's documentation at https://www.zotero.org/support/styles. Creating an alternate style is a challenge, though.
I make use of the existing Item Types and enter data in a way that captures everything necessary for the particular type of record. Many publishers are more concerned that you are thorough and consistent in the style you use than that you mimic the perfect syntax of a style. I typically use the Document item type for the records kept by government agencies. I have found the Loc. in Archive field a good place to tuck information that doesn't have an obvious field. And the Archive field's contents will wrap up your footnote, unless you add information in the Suffix field when you're putting a footnote in your word processor.
If you're trying to use the Evidence Style in Evidence Explained, you won't be able to mimic it perfectly but can get pretty close. Take, for example, this deed footnote that is in EE4, page 364, using this format:
Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Deed Book 18: 155, William Timmons and wife & Samuel Witter and wife to John Gouter, 8 April 1839; Register of Deeds Office, Chambersburg.
Set up a record in Zotero with your fields this way:
Title: Deed Book, Vol. 18
| Item Type | Document |
|---|---|
| Author | Franklin County, Pennsylvania |
| Date | 8 April 1839 |
| Archive | Register of Deeds Office, Chambersburg |
| Loc. in Archive | William Timmons and wife & Samuel Witter and wife to John Gouter |
In the notes you take about this deed, you need to capture the page number, 155. When you create your citation in your word processor, add the page number, and the footnote will come out:
Franklin County, Pennsylvania, “Deed Book, Vol. 18,” April 8, 1839, 155, William Timmons and wife & Samuel Witter and wife to John Gouter, Register of Deeds Office, Chambersburg.
You can do it multiple ways. It is a bit experimental at first, but it gets easier. If you are in a situation in which you must do syntax-perfect Evidence Style, you could type the perfect footnote in a note attached to the Zotero source--or, type the Evidence style book page number in the Extra field, so you'll know where to go to refine the syntax before you turn this over to the agency requiring it. If you have some leeway on the footnotes, the vitally important thing is to look at the footnote and ask yourself, "Could a reader find their way to this source, based on this text?" I am confident that the footnote produced here would get a reasonable person to the source.
By the way, if the government book is not named "Deed Book," you could put brackets around the text as a reminder to yourself to remove the quotation marks and brackets before you publish the footnote.
I hope that makes some sense.
Donna
Donna, as usual thank you so much for your thorough and helpful reply.
Donna, a follow up question. Is there any way create a hyperlink in the comments section of a note to quickly access the image of a deed (without doing harm to the way the beta version of Zotero 7 works)? At your suggestion, I have created a deed category in the documents item type, but the documents item type has no hyperlink capability, such as can be found in the patents item type. There are ways to put in hyperlinks into programs. I can copy the URL into the comments for the note, but without a hyperlink, it will not work. Therefore, to make it work, I would need to put the URL for the deed in a hyperlink in documents item, probably as a note under the deed that I am discussing in the documents item type. If I do insert a hyperlink into the comments section of a note, I am concerned that this will somehow create problems with Zotero 7. Thanks.
If I understand the question, you have a few options. You can right-click on the Document in the Item List in the center, and choose Add Attachment--Web Link. Or you can insert the link into a Note using the Link tool in the Notes toolbar. It looks like two chain links. If I misunderstood the question, let me know.
