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New user with various questions...
Use what works for you...I keep coming back to this statement. I don't know and that's proving to be a problem. I've done research for 30 years filing by document type. Pitfall is one person has many different file types: birth, death, newspaper etc. and I quickly lost track of what I had for each given person.
I've tried by location and person and those don't work either, neither is intuitive.
So...
Q1. Should my laptop file structure match the one I use on FTM? I make a main source: Washington BMDs - cite each individual record
Q2. Should I file on my laptop by document type, then rely on Zotero to keep track of what I have for each person? Is that even possible?
Q3. Why can't the commonly used EE fields be 'bolded' when citing so you know which fields to fill and which to ignore? Would this be an easy fix to make?
Q4. My internet bandwith doesn't allow for uploading to the Cloud, will this create an issue as I'm uploading on-site to a local server?
Q5. Did I miss getting to read Ann Gilchrest's blog? all links seem to fail.
I know this has been covered to death for many, many years on various forums/sites/blogs and videos, I'd really appreciate other's opinions so I can finally move forward.
Hi, Michele, and welcome. Fortunately, Zotero lets you drag and drop a record in multiple collections, without physically duplicating it. This makes the filing less troublesome. I sort everything under one of the following categories, depending on its primary association:
_REFERENCE LIBRARY
PEOPLE
PLACES
TOOLS
TOPICS
I store records related to dictionaries, maps, and other broadly used sources in _REFERENCE LIBRARY, using the underscore as the first character to sort it to the top. If a record could belong in more than one of the collections, I put it in one place and drag it into the other places. If the record is the church minutes for a particular church, I put the record under PLACES (into subcategories by county, then town). I make notes underneath it for mentions of individuals and drag those into the PEOPLE folders (subcategorized into Surname, then name--women under their maiden name).
If I'm collecting information about a tool like Zotero or FTM, it goes in TOOLS. If I want to collect information about a subject--not specific to a person or place--I put it under TOPICS. For example, I collected articles about the situation of unwed mothers in the late nineteenth century and put them there.
I don't try to match FTM's structure on my laptop or in Zotero. But I do keep my laptop files in the same order I do in Zotero. It's not essential, but it does help to take the frustration out of finding things. Zotero can serve as your finder/map to where you stored things on your laptop, if you need to keep them in two different orders. Just be aware that if you move a file on your laptop, the link will break. You'll need to remap it from Zotero. If you want Zotero to store things by person, you need to set it up that way.
I usually encourage people who've been accumulating for years to start with a new filing system on new material being accumulated first. Then, slowly move the old stuff over, a bit at a time. Reworking 30 years of material before you start on new research can block you from the fun stuff for way too long.
As to the EE citation material, Zotero doesn't support EE. It does support Chicago Manual of Style, which is the closest thing. After conversations with Zotero about EE, I've come to understand why it is not advisable for them to rework the database to support EE. It's simply too complex and was not designed to be efficient in data management. When I'm creating a new citation, I open the Kindle version of EE in the background, and grab anything it requires that CMOS doesn't ask for. In the Extra field, I type "EE" and the page number, so I can always find my way back to EE's format. I have been hearing, by the way, that many genealogical publications are moving away from requiring EE, letting articles be published in CMOS. But it still can be very beneficial to capture the detail that EE suggests. It removes the stress of matching the EE format exactly, though, and that's a relief.
With regard to the cloud uploads, Zotero's backup is also an upload to the cloud, in essence. If your wiFi can't handle that, you can still work on Zotero--just not sync to the online backup.
I'm not sure what's happened to Anne's blog. I hope she'll check in.
I hope this is of some help, Michele. Let me know if I raised more questions than I answered. Thanks!
