How should this citation be recorded in the citation/source/repository fields?

In Zotero I make a few Collections, here is a few screenshots of the one I use at the moment, I am working on a new template, but not sure when I will start using it and move all my sources over to a new database, maybe when Zotero 7 is out of beta.





as you can see I have seperate collections for Ancestry, FS etc. (all of them are private only copies of original sources)
I also have a _link to pages with sources (I have called them “kildesider” in Norwegian) for each continent or and country, where I add all the sites and pages I find, but I don’t use at the moment in my research, e.g., a site with some local Newspapers or a register for sailor in the wars or Documents of Ports etc.

In Zotero, you can add an item to multiple collections, so I always make a collection of my research subject/object AND in a Repository & Archives collection, then I add a main Item for the source saved in a sub-collection for that source, and if I need to reference multiple pages/posts in that source, I make a copy of the source item, where I add specific details and then add that to the research objects sub-collection

You can see I have som numbers etc., some of them is for my main collection, mostly to be sure I always have the correct order of those collections, others can be e.g., family numbers etc.
This is just something I do to make som order in my chaos.
But I recommend to use 4 to 6 digits in front of the name, with filling zeroes., (Zotero sort as Windows Explorer does).

I also recommend you always use ISO date format in format YYYY-MM-DD e.g., 2023-02-08, that way it is easier to not mix up European and American date formats.


My system is in no way perfect, so don’t use blindly as a template, be precise when creating names, and stick to a good naming standard for all lists and collections you have and use the same everywhere, so if you e.g. uses file format “YYYY-MM-DD file name”, use the same when you create names for notes in Gramps, or for your own image files/media files.

Also try as far as possible to use names for image files from sources that are as similar to the source name as possible, e.g. “Churchbook xx, p. 07.pdf”

In gramps, I use the full name of the source plus details such as page numbers for citations, these I currently have to add manually because the template I used in Zotero disappeared for me and I simply haven’t bothered to set it up again because it most likely changes in version 7.

In this way, I can use the same source references in the vast majority of programs I use.

It is also possible to use a formatted direct link to Zotero, which you can retrieve directly, but I recommend that you learn the basic principles and basic functions of zotero first.

It may also be that you will enjoy using Obsidian for research notes, you can link these markdown files directly in Gramps as media files.
It may be easier to write and format notes in Markdown than directly in Gramps if you start using notes a lot.
There are also addons for Obsidian, Foam for VSC, Zettlr or Joplin that retrieve sources and citations via a json file and this can be updated automatically with the better bibtex addon for Zotero.

One of the great advantages of using one of these markdown editors as a research notebook is that they create a network graph that links your notes by simply typing in [[WIKI-links]] for what you want to be linked.

The structure I use for collections in Zotero is also reflected to my research notes folder structure in Obsidian/Foam, it is reflected to my folder structure on hard drive.

I also have a similar folder structur/hierarchy for my person photographs and been using it for more than 30 years now.

this last printscreen is a draft of my new Zotero structure template.


What you choose is up to you, the most important is that you use a system that make it easy for you to backtrail your sources and citations, but that it is so advanced that you can do it without a computer.

Edit: OOH, if you start use Zotero, start to use the link items function early on, you can get a lot of use of that feature when you start to advance your usage… I can promise you, going through 15-20000 items to link them correctly is not a job you want to do… → The idiot me figured that out after two years of adding newspaper to Zotero (2 decads of multiple newspapers daily and weekly editions). don’t do that mistake

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Thanks Brian I will try a few things to begin with as I only have a few experimental files I would like to work with for now. Just setup a test file. Just needed to know a bit about the program. JNELSON

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Thank you so much I will be doing something similar now that I can see how one gets going in the right direction. JNELSON

You should also make some tags/keywords in Zotero, I have some for the most “important” families, and for types of sources to be able to fast find them, I also use keywords with color for my workflow.

If you really want to learn more advanced usage of Zotero and maybe Obsidian, there is a few extremely good YT channels for that topic.

Search for “Zotero and Obsidian”, “Using Zotero with Obsidian” or similar.
Even if I write a tutorial in Norwegian, I can’t get anywhere near those people in how-to guides and tutorials.

There is also an American woman that have written 2 books about using Zotero for genealogy research (don’t remember her name now).

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I will take a look at it, but I have actually dropped out of using Gramps at the moment, looking for other useful Open Source software while waiting for 5.2, and since Zotero 7 will have a lot new features that actually may alter my workflow, I don’t do much in Zotero either, other than saving and cleaning up sources… I’m damaged goods after I got hit by the car two years ago…

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Donna Cox Baker? perhaps

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Thank you I will check everything I can and maybe the library may have something about this there.JNELSON

Yeh, that’s her name.

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