Zotero for Archival Research

Use Zotero as a Research Log

A best practice of Archival Research is to keep a research log.

A research log may be kept on paper, in a word processing program, or as a spreadsheet. A sample research log is as follows. 

Organizing your archival research in Zotero allows you to transform your research log into a personalized research database.

The fields that a research log includes are built into the item information that Zotero contains. Add comments and other information in Zotero notes. 

Zotero Fields Cheat Sheet

Each item in your Zotero library has Fields.These fields provide information about the item that Zotero uses to create citations. 

This cheat-sheet shows how to use fields so that Zotero creates accurate citation information for archival materials. 

Field title                     Best use 

Title                               Document or material title

Author                          Author of document or material

Abstract                       Can use for brief notes if desired

Date                              Date of document or material

Language                     Language of document or material

URL                               Finding aid / Catalog record URL

Accessed                      No suggested use

Archive                          Full name of archival repository

Loc. in Archive             Important: Give call number, folder / box number in this field, as well as the title of the collection

Library Catalog             No suggested use

Call Number                   Can input call number, but be sure to also put call number in “Loc. in Archive”

Rights                             Copyright notes, Access or Use Restrictions, Permission to Publish information

Extra                               Annotations; Zotero can create an annotated Chicago Style bibliography

Choose Your Style

Use one of the following Chicago 18th styles, which have been modified to accommodate manuscript and letter item types.

• Chicago Manual of Style 18th edition (notes and bibliography)
• Chicago Manual of Style 18th edition (notes and bibliography, with ibid.)
• Chicago Manual of Style 18th edition (shortened notes and bibliography)
• Chicago Manual of Style 18th edition (shortened notes and bibliography, with ibid.)

NOTE: Download the style from the linked file, then open the file to automatically install it in Zotero.

Pro Tips

Titles: 

• Enter manuscript and letter titles into the Title field in Zotero as you want them to appear in the citation. 
• If you want a manuscript or letter to have quotation marks around the title, you can add curly quotation marks to the Zotero title field. Use a word processing program to create curly quotation marks that you can copy over to Zotero.
• For shortened subsequent citations, enter the shortened version of the title into the “Short Title” field in Zotero as you want it to appear in the citation.

Use separate manuscript item and collection records:

Create separate Zotero records for each individual manuscript item that you cite from the archival collection, plus another Zotero record for the collection as a whole. 

• Use the individual manuscript item records to create footnote citations. 
• Use the collection record for the bibliography. 
• Note that when you put together the bibliography, you can use the functionality of the Zotero plugin in Word to edit the bibliography: specifically, you can remove the individual manuscript items from the bibliography and add in the collection record.

Letters in manuscript form:

• Add the location where the letter was written to the Place field if that is important for context or to distinguish the letter from other similar materials. 

Letters in published collections:

• Create separate Zotero records for the letter and for the published volume. 
• When you come to the point of actually citing the work, create a “quick copy” of the letter citation from Zotero, then paste that into the “Prefix” field in the Zotero “Add/Edit Citation” window and add in. Then cite the published collection that the letter appears in. This will make the letter’s citation appear prior to the citation of the published collection in the footnote, and only the published volume will appear in the bibliography. 

Pre-1900 books:

• Chicago 18th style does not include the place of publication, which has been updated in the Zotero code for this style. However, there’s an exception: books published pre-1900 should include the place of publication, but not the publisher. 
• If you have any pre-1900 books in your Zotero library, delete the publisher information from the Zotero record, and the citation will automatically include just the place of publication. 

What is different about these styles?

Titles

• Quotation marks: These styles do not automatically place quotation marks around manuscript and letter item types and manuscript collection titles. 
• Casing: These styles do not have default title casing for manuscript and letter titles in footnotes. Instead, manuscript and letter titles will appear as entered in the Zotero field.

Dates

• Formatting: These styles use day-month-year formatting for manuscript and letter footnotes, rather than month-day-year.
• Parentheses: These styles remove the parentheses around a date or “n.d.” in a manuscript item footnote.
• No date: These styles remove the “n.d.” from manuscript collection bibliography entries. 
• Subsequent citations: If a date is present in the Zotero date field, it will appear in subsequent shortened citations for manuscript and letter item types. If no date is present in Zotero, the “n.d.” will not appear in subsequent shortened citations.

Local Storage

Store your images on your hard drive and link them to your Zotero library.

Right click on the item to which you want to link your research images (OSX ctrl+click). Select Add Attachment then  Attach Link to File.

Note: You cannot link to a folder, but you can select multiiple image files to link to your item.

Cloud Storage 

Store your images in cloud storage like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Flickr and link them to your Zotero library.

Ensure your cloud storage is set to private. Photographs taken of archival collections are for personal research use only. 

The following example shows how to use Dropbox and Zotero. You would follow a similar method for using other cloud storage services. 

In Dropbox, create folders that match the Zotero collections and / or items that you have photographed.

Copy the URL for the dropbox folder that contains your research images.

Add the URL to the "URL" field in the corresponding Zotero item.