The Historical Journal and University of Cambridge - Faculty of History Zotero Styles

In my capacity as "private secretary" to a PhD student in the faculty of history at the University of Cambridge, I put together a couple Zotero styles that may be of wider interest.

The Historical Journal style updates an earlier version put together by Julian Onions.

The University of Cambridge - Faculty of History style basically adds a bibliography to The Historical Journal style. It should correspond more-or-less to the examples on the Faculty of History website here.

Both Zotero styles can be downloaded into Zotero from the Zotero Style Repository. Click on the following links to go directly there:

The Historical Journal

University of Cambridge - Faculty of History

P.S. If you are not already using Zotero for academic work, you should. Here's how Zotero describes itself:

Zotero is a free, open-source research tool that helps you collect, organize, and analyze research and share it in a variety of ways. Zotero includes the best parts of older reference manager software — the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references — and the best aspects of modern software and web applications, such as the ability to organize, tag, and search in advanced ways. Zotero interacts seamlessly with online resources: when it senses you are viewing a book, article, or other object on the web, it can automatically extract and save complete bibliographic references. Zotero effortlessly transmits information to and from other web services and applications, and it runs both as a web service and offline on your personal devices.

Zotero Notes

I recently found out two Zotero tips that will save me a lot of time:

1. To correct capitalization when an entry is imported from, say, Worldcat or Amazon, right click on the title, select "Transform Text" and then "Title Case." HT: Mark Sample.
2. To keep Zotero from automatically capitalizing German titles in footnotes and bibliographies as if they are English titles, enter "de" under "Language." (For French titles, enter "fr," etc.) HT: Zotero.
3. Update: A bonus tip: To disable English spell-checking so that foreign-language words aren't highlighted, follow these steps.

To find out more about Zotero and why everyone should use it as their Bibliography manager, see Zotero's home page. My earlier blog posts on Zotero are here.

Modifying Zotero Citation (CSL) Styles

Technical post alert: Making minor changes to Zotero citation styles is quite simple once you have done it a few times if you are familiar with basic xml coding. My problem is that I typically only need to modify a style once every three years or so, and by the time I return to it I have forgotten how it is done. So, for my reference (primarily), here is how I did it this time:

1. In Zotero standalone, go to Tools > Preferences > Advanced, and click on Open CSL Editor under the General tab.
2. Select a reference from your Zotero library and the citation style you wish to modify. The formatted reference will display in the bottom half of the screen with the xml in the top.
3. Make changes to the style sheet. (I found what I wanted to use by checking a few different styles and cutting and pasting from one to the other. To find the right bit of code, I copied the whole xml file to Word so that I could use Word's search features.)
4. Follow the instructions in this step-by-step guide to change the id and name of the file so that you don't copy over a standard style. 
5. Validate the xml file following the instructions here.
6. Select the xml file, paste it into Notepad, and save it as a text file for reference.
7. Save the style as a csl file by clicking "Save As" "All" and make the extension csl. 
8. Install the csl file by following the instructions here.

Two helpful resources:

• CSL Language Specification
• Writing CSL: Features and Best Practices

This time around I modified the Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition in two ways: (1) to remove final punctuation (non-standard, but my preference), drawing on Adam Smith's directions here (search for "layout suffix" and change layout suffix="."> to <layout suffix=""> under the notes section near the end of the file); and (2) to allow abbreviations in journal titles in the notes (see the general directions here; I ended up copying the relevant section of the SBL style). My modified style is available here.

Now back to the writing that Zotero is supposed to help me with.

New Zotero Citation Style for Currents in Biblical Research

A new citation style for Zotero (and Mendeley) users who wish to have their bibliographies and author-date references automatically formatted according to the Currents in Biblical Research style sheet may be found here (scroll down to cbr). The style is based on the Chicago (Author-Date) style created by Julian Onions, and benefited greatly from feedback on this forum. (You will need to be running Zotero 2.1 for the style to work. For installation questions consider this page or search the Zotero support forums.)

This, my latest bout with productivity software, may well have taken more time than it would have to format all the citations in my next article by hand, but hopefully it will benefit other Zotero users who write for the journal, and I learned a lot about CSL (Citation Style Language) in the process. Now to write the article...

A Zotero Wishlist (or things EndNote does that Zotero doesn't do...yet)

I wish Zotero...

• listed the total number of records.
(Type ctrl-a, and the total number will appear in the right column.)
• allowed you to search in a highlighted column by typing.
• allowed you to open more than one database at the same time (see this thread: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2266/).
• allowed you to search and replace data (see EndNote's powerful "change and move fields" command).
• displayed tags on the same page as basic record information.
• sorted by complete author instead of by last name.
• allowed you to add formatting to titles (I understand this will be implemented soon).
• imported multiple PDF's (EndNote doesn't do this either).
• did not take so long to load large databases.

Hopefully, many of these will be implemented soon.


For the record, I still prefer Zotero to EndNote.

Fron EndNote to Zotero: Take Two

This rather technical post has nothing to do with the above picture, which I took on our way back from Buffalo Pound last week. It is rather a follow-up to this description of the process I used to import my EndNote library into Zotero:

With help from the Zotero Forums and the excellent free Komodo Edit utility, I successfully modified the javascript for the Zotero RIS translator so that it imports my all-important "Date Read" and "Label" EndNote fields into the sortable Zotero "libraryCat" and "Rights" fields, and so that the "Series Number", "Number of Volumes" and "Edition" fields can be translated.

I also made extensive changes to my Revised version of EndNote's RIS Output style so that it interfaces with Zotero's RIS translator and correctly (for the most part) captures all (or almost all) *my* data. Since the EndNote data entry process is flexible, I can't guarantee that it will correctly capture anyone else's data, but it should work as a starting point that improves on the current filters available through Zotero and EndNote. Feel free to download the following files and modify them as you wish, but don't hold me responsible for what happens to your data (or your computer)!

Zotero RIS translator (created by Simon Kornblith; modified by me): RIS.js (I will post the relevant code on the relevant Zotero Forum.)
EndNote RIS Output style (I deleted all but the following reference types: Journal Article, Book, Book Section, Edited Book, Encyclopedia, Conference Paper, Newspaper Article, Thesis, Unpublished Work, Web Page): RefMan (RIS) Export Revised

Update: My final (?) Zotero post is a wishlist.
___________

Regular non-Zotero-related blogging will resume soon.

EndNote Output Styles for Biblical Studies Journals

During the past three years I modified the poorly executed Society of Biblical Literature output style supplied by EndNote, and used it to create new output styles for the journals Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Currents in Biblical Research, and Novum Testamentum (footnotes only). To my relief, the IS department had my data backed up, so I was able to recover the work I thought I had lost. Click on the links below to download the styles:

Society of Biblical Literature
Catholic Biblical Quarterly
Currents in Biblical Research
Novum Testamentum

The styles are provided as is. Some more fine tuning may be necessary.

Finally, this post links to the revised EndNote RIS style and the modified Zotero translator that I used to import my database into Zotero. Zotero already has an SBL style that works well; CBQ, CBR and NovT have yet to be created. When I get around to creating or translating them into Zotero, I will link to them as well. (Alternatively, if anyone would like to translate them, I'll be glad to make use of the translated versions!)

Importing EndNote Records into Zotero

Update: See Take Two for an updated Zotero RIS translator and a new version of EndNote's RIS Output Style.

It took me about 8-10 hours to import my database of 4000+ records from EndNote X1 into Zotero. I decided not to worry about my EndNote Groups, but the rest of my data (I think), and my links to PDF files, transferred successfully. This is what I did:

1. Delete duplicate records - For some reason, EndNote created multiple copies of some of my records (another reason to switch from EndNote). I used EndNote's "Find Duplicates" function to create a subset of about 800 records, and deleted a few hundred duplicates manually.
2. Modify EndNote's RIS Output Style (time consuming technical step) - The basic process for importing records from EndNote to Zotero is described on the Zotero website here. There are also extensive Zotero forums discussion (beginning in 2006) with additional technical information here and, to a lesser extent, here. Zotero's recommendation, which I followed, is to export data using EndNote's Reference Manager (RIS) Output Style, save as a text file, and then open the text file in Zotero. The process works smoothly, but I encountered two major issues with my own data: 

a. The RIS text file did not include a Customized data field I use all the time in EndNote to indicate when I read a book or article. I was not about to lose this information or reenter it manually.

b. The RIS text file tagged EndNote's "Label" field, which I use to indicate where books and articles are located (in the library, in my personal collection, in my filing cabinet, on my hard drive, etc.), as a note (N1). I wanted this field to appear on Zotero's "Info" column (perhaps as Archive or "Loc. in Archive" or even as "Library Catalog"), not as a separate note.

It took me quite awhile to find a suitable workaround. I have worked enough with EndNote's import and export filters to know that just about any EndNote field can be linked to just about any field in another program or bibliography layout. It just takes time to (re)learn how it is done, and to troubleshoot what isn't working. Unfortunately, Zotero's import filters are not adjustable in the same way--unless you are a programmer, but even then changes to Zotero code would presumably have to be approved. So my options were limited. I had to find out which RIS field codes the Zotero import filter recognizes and how it transfers them. Then I had to choose fields that would work best for me. I found the necessary details here:

•  This webpage explains RIS field code labels. This apparently does the same thing.

•  This page identifies Zotero field codes, which helps explain the code for the RIS Zotero translator. The latter explains which RIS field codes the Zotero import filter recognizes.

In the end, for problem a., I decided to adjust EndNote's RIS Output style to tag EndNote's "Label" field as a Keyword (KW), which Zotero reads as a tag. This means that my Location data is listed along with subject keywords in Zotero, but tags are easily searchable, and this is better than including the information as a separate note. It works.

For problem b., I linked my "Date Read" (Custom 1) EndNote field to M1, which Zotero inserts into the Extra field in Zotero's record info column. Unfortunately, I can't sort my records by "Date Read" (the Extra field) as I can in EndNote, but at least the data is there as a field. (Zotero also doesn't list the total number of records in a library. Why is that?)

3. Highlight All Records and Copy Formatted in EndNote - I couldn't get my revised RIS Output Style to output correctly as a text file, so I selected all records, and selected "copy formatted" in EndNote, and then pasted the whole thing into an empty WordPad file.
4. Update Links to PDF Files - EndNote doesn't provide the full pathname to PDF files. Zotero offers a script that can make the changes for you. I found it easier to do a global search and replace with the correct path name.
5. Save as a Unicode Text file. This is important if you have any German, Greek or Hebrew text in the file you want to import.
6. Import into Zotero as described here.
 

QED.