Issues With Zotero

Brian Moline Jan 20, 2010 10:56:20 PM
Per Andrea's request, I am starting this thread as a place to discuss issues we run into with Zotero and, hopefully, ways to fix any problems we might have individually or as a class. A couple of issues I noticed: One, it will not accept line breaks, so citations get jumbled together with the rest of the text. I wonder if there's a way to use HTML to insist the line breaks show up (I've tried to dig into this, but it doesn't appear possible.)? Also, when I pasted my citation from MS Word, Zotero didn't initially include the article URL for some reason. I had to go back in, remove the greater than and less than signs - (which didn't show up when I typed this message the first time!) from the correct MLA citation of the URL, and repaste it. It's not exactly correct MLA formatting for that reason, but it was the only way to get it to work.
NCSchiess Jan 21, 2010 1:07:18 AM
(1). I am worried that my Group members are lost and are not posting in the Group Discussion section. (2). There are a lot of articles being uploaded and synced...weren't we just suppose to post one for tonight? (3). Is there a way to organize that long, long, long, list of nearly 100 articles? I tried to rearrange them into something more logical...can't figure it out. (4). I cannot quite figure out how to get my group members' articles to appear in MY Library so that I can read them (to respond to them) without having to flip back and forth and risk losing the posting/reply that I have already started. For example, Karen in my group, obviously posted an article and discussed it with the citation (as the assignment said to do) in our Group Area. I want her article to load into My Library so I can post a Reply about it and read it at the same time on this dual/split screen set-up thingy.
rvest Jan 21, 2010 2:48:11 AM
Why don't we just use the OnCourse forums instead?
Erin Milanese Jan 21, 2010 4:05:51 PM
I'm looking into the line break issue.... Nancy - no there is no way to organize the group library as it appears on the web. The list just displays them in the order they are uploaded, with the most recent at the top. They are organized (or should be) in the individual folders. On the right hand side you should see "group library" and "student collections", and if you click on either of these, items will appear in a bit more organized fashion. - Erin
Erin Milanese Jan 21, 2010 7:59:02 PM
FYI -- I have tried various html and Java codes, and neither work for line breaks. I haven't given up yet, but for the next while the giant text chunks are just something we have to deal with.
Michael C. Steffens Jan 25, 2010 4:32:36 PM
With respect to our class, it's really difficult to figure out who people are unless their name is available somewhere. I end up having to go to the class roster and try to figure out who people are. It would be good (at least for these purposes) if Zotero required a real name at some point and required that name to be available somewhere in the system. I get privacy concerns, but I end up spending lots of extra time finding out who I'm talking to, looking up articles, etc.