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Work flow
Thank you, Stacey and Donna!
While waiting to get my computer rebuilt I started to play with these ideas on my laptop. Previously I was doing a separate entry for each sacramental entry in a parish register using the Book Section. See the first image. (In several locals I have literally 100's of entries to record.)
Taking Stacey's and Donna's suggestions I changed how I was doing these. See the second image. I already had 75 separate entries from the registers in Austria added and I am not even a quarter of the way done. Each entry included an attachment with a link to the image. Several also included a note that contained an analysis, transcriptions & translations. Baptisms, marriages, and deaths were also related to each other using the Relate tab.
I ended up creating one Book entry for each register. Then I linked each image to that register. My images have a specific naming pattern that includes source information. I don't need the full name of the file in Zotero so I changed the name in Zotero but kept the image labeled according to my naming pattern. Using Stacey's technique of adding the person id from FTM I added that to the new name in Zotero. Since I use two separate databases in FTM one for mom's side and one for dad's side I also added SchindlerSide and GilchrestSide to the name in Zotero. The last thing I added to the new name was DIRECT LINE to make it easy to spot them in the list of entries.
Next, I put in my full citation and any notes in the note area for the link to the image.
Then I used the Related feature in the top section to relate all the BMD's for the same person to each other.
In a couple of cases, it was easier to keep the entire note. See image 3. In this case, I titled the note to match the entry adding a description. Then I related the note to the image entry.
The reason I decided to put the person id in the name of the entry was to help distinguish same-named individuals.
For marriages, I used the Relationship ID from FTM as opposed to using two different ID's.
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Wow, I've been looking at the images you attached and how you did it. That works! I didn't even realize you could tag/relate a note. I just did the same thing. I had two notes for two different people found in a record and related the note to the image. The other thing I'm experimenting with is removing my tag for the people found and research log # from the actual source and putting it on the note for the people. Then when I do advanced search on the TAG = my log number, the results have the note BOLDED rather than the source. In my example screen shot it doesn't show the power of doing that because there's only two people on this source and they are both related to the same research log. But in my mind, if I had a source "1930 Census, Buchanan County MO" I would have lots of people and different research logs for different reasons and multiple images for different towns in that county. Then if a tagged people with a specific research log #, I could see what I have all at once for a certain research log.
If you can use your imagination here and pretend my screen shot is a census record. I searched by research log ID, TAG = RL00001. Then Ellis, Nicholas and the image are in log RL00001 and the other two notes are in a different RL because they aren't in BOLD.
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Just wanted to say thank you again! Donna for writing the book and creating this forum. I've gotten more ideas and solutions from you and Ann on this forum and made more progress in coming up with something that works for me than I thought possible. I had just started another excel research log and thought about the futility of it when I created it. I have multiple excel files and no way of knowing what is really in all of them in one cross-referenced place. ZOTERO is fantastic!!
I so glad to hear it, Stacey--and agree about Ann. What a treasure to our forum! Thanks for the feedback!
I really appreciate the discussion of Workflow. I've been struggling with this for years. Oddly; I came up with an "inkling" of what I needed to do and, surprisingly, it seems to be along the same lines as what has been discussed in this thread. That said; I'm still formulating my overall workflow and toolset.
I have found that genealogical programs are much more limited in what they do well than many users seem to realize. So; I rely heavily on both Scrivener and NeoOffice Professional for written work-products. I use the latter mostly because Scrivener does not seem to be designed to handle tabular information and genealogical research and genealogical writing often involves quite a bit of it. I'm now trying to bring Zotero into the mix for controlling/documenting my preliminary research and to allow me to file those "Bright Shiny Objects" that keep drawing me off target. I'm not yet sure of how much help Zotero will be in my citations as I tend to follow Evidence Explained formatting rather closely.
I should, however, note that I tend to be a "conceptual" learner and jumping directly into the details of a method (as in this thread) really leaves me feeling a bit adrift. I need an overview of the workflow before I look at the details. Is there someplace on the forums that the suggested workflow is captured in its entirety? What is managed by each tool in the "toolbox" and how does information flow from one tool to the next? Hopefully, there is a graphical representation (I'm also extremely visual in my learning style).
Hi History Hunter,
After a year of using Zotero I am still tweaking my workflow. Like you I use Scrivener to do my writing. I use my genealogy software primarily for charts, family group sheets and RIN’s.
I don’t think there is a specific forum that has a complete workflow with all the steps someone might use.
I will attempt to share what I am doing currently with new material below. My workflow is slightly different when adding old material.
A couple of months ago I came upon a newspaper article about a 2C3X removed. She was arrested for bigamy. Of course, I wanted to know more.
Ann
Step One:
The first thing I did was add a sub-collection under my Question’s collection, called Rose Baer. This allows me to put everything I find on her in one collection.
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Step Two:
I don’t store images inside of Zotero so I needed to download the article to my computer. I store newspaper articles in a folder called Newspapers which is broken down by surname. After the image was downloaded to the computer. I add it into Zotero using the connector or typing it in directly into my Newspaper Collection. I don’t like the way Newspapers.com loads with the connector. So I usually type it in or use the connector and change the item type from “web page” to the newspaper item. Notice that when you use the connector or simply add an item to Zotero it automatically gives you the date and time the item was added.
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Step Three
Once I have the entry in Zotero I link it to my image. I use the note section of the image to add a citation and will often transcribe the article so it will show up in searches in Zotero. With newspapers I often write a basic citation. If I need to add the second layer, the information about where I found it and the access date is in the entry.
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Step 4
Next, I will link the entry to the image and anything else I want to relate using the relate feature. See the far right of the image.
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