Using Zotero for notes, transcription, and writing papers
For the purposes of the seminar, and, hopefully for all your
future research and writing, you are expected to:
1) acquire a
USB flash drive of 2 or more gigabytes
2) PC users are
to install the Portableapps.com version of the Firefox Browser
on the USB drive. I recommend installing the full menu of
Portableapps applications and creating an autorun.inf file that
automatically starts the sequence of note taking programs when you
insert the USB drive into your computer. How to create the inf
file will be addressed separately in seminar. Once the
portableapps menu and firefox have been installed, go to the options
menu in firefox and make about:blank your default
home page
MAC users are to download and install the MAC version of the most recent Firefox Browser.
3) with the installed Firefox browser on the flash drive,
go to Zotero.org and install the Zotero note taking program for your
operating system (PC, MAC, Linux, etc.). You may have to
download the Zotero xpi file (right click on the download button and
save the xpi file to a 'software' directory on your flash drive. If
you have to download the xpi file to install Zotero, do so by finding
the file with your browser and double clicking on the xpi file.
4)
once Zotero has been installed in your Fire Fox Browser (the name
should appear in the lower right corner of your Firefox browser
screen), click on Zotero and go the gear symbol on the row of
choices. Go to Preferences and then to Advanced. Select
Custom and go to the root of your flash drive. Make a new
folder labeled with zotero, your initials, and 'wih' which stands for
the seminar, What is History?. My folder, for example, is
labeled zotero_ecp_usb98, because I wanted to make the file unique
and distinct from other zotero files on other usb drives and my
Zotero files encompass more than the WIH seminar. Note that in
labeling files and folders on the USB drive or the hard drive of the
computer, never use spaces. Always use underscores. except in
designating sequential files where hyphens are used. This eases
cross platform communication problems and programming for retrieval.
After making the new folder, click o.k. You will then
have to restart Firefox. From that point on, all of your zotero
files will be located in the new folder you created on your flash
drive. Note that you can use spaces and other symbols in
creating the virtual folders in Zotero and in the file descriptions
of Zotero. It is only in folders and file names created on the
drives associated with the PC that spaces and special characters must
be avoided.
Note: from this point on, instructions for
installing software are for PC users only. There should be
similar MAC based software that can be used in the same manner as is
discussed below, but students who use a MAC should consult with the
instructor to determine what works best.
5) go to
portableapps.com through the portableapps menu, download and install
KOMPOZER. At the menu go to options then to 'get more apps
...'. Download and install KOMPOZER following the instructions
under options again, for installing software or simply install from
the downloaded executable in the software folder..
6) go to
the IRFAN web site and download/install both the IRFAN software and
the plug ins. I would recommend downloading both the software
and the plugins to your software directory and then install both from
the directory, being sure to install the software on your flash
drive.
You are now ready to begin taking notes, composing papers, and transcribing documents
The key to successful use of
Zotero is to read through the help sections on the Zotero.org web
site and to organize your note taking, writing, and transcription
within the foldered environment of Zotero (the far left column of
Zotero). There you create folders and sub folders that are
maintained in the ZOTERO sql database. Always be sure to back
up those files either by periodically exporting all files to
another location, or copying the whole of your zotero directory to
another drive/location.
There are three elements to the Zotero window:
the left hand column where you create virtual folders/collections and virtual sub folders/sub collections. The contents of these folders/collections when highlighted are displayed in the middle column
the middle column where you import files from the web, create your own files, and label/index your files.
the right hand column which indicates the location of the highlighted file in the middle column and where you keep/compose notes relating to the highlighted file.
Across the top of the Zotero window are the function buttons with which you create your folders/collections, download files from the web, reference files on your flash and hard drives, and otherwise create and manage your notes.
As an example of how Zotero might be
used for note taking, transcription, editing and composition, we use
the John White Webster murder trial (1850). This trial in
Boston appeared as a daily record transmitted by telegraph to
newspapers all over the country. There is one official
transcript (Bemis) and several unofficial ones, two of which were
provided by the newspapers who had reporters present, and one by a
promoter of a new approach to trial transcripts which he called
"phonographic" (Stone). These have been converted to
searchable pdfs and comprise the printed primary sources. The
official transcript is also available on line, searchable, from
Google Books. In addition there are the defendants and defense
attorney's notes that have survived and have been imaged for
transcription, editing, and interpretation at the
http://editonline.us web site. The secondary writings of
historians include two books that also have been converted to
searchable pdfs (for personal educational purposes and uses only).
The printed primary and secondary sources are assumed to be
on the flash drive in separate folders. Links to them in Zotero
are made to them in folders/collections created for that purpose.
After creatiing a folder/collection in the left column and
highlighting it, At the plus sign (green) button in zotero, use the
link to ... function to create working links to the printed
primary and secondary sources on your flash drive.
Begin
using the Zotero 'system' by testing how to initiate composition.
Create a folder/collection in the left hand column of Zotero for
the transcription/editing assignment. Go to your home page (it
should be blank if you used about:blank as your home page).
Consider this your 'white board' for composition. Copy the page to
you new folder/collection using the camera icon at the top of the
window iin zotero. Label the downloaded page with something
like "transcription assignment" and click on the page. It
will still be blank. Use the show file tab in the right
column of Zotero. When the window appears, right click on
'blank.html' and use the open with function to open the
file with KOMPOZER or Open Office Writer Portable. You
may have to browse the files on your flash drive to find the software
the first time (found in the portableapps directory on your flash
drive).
Edit the page, placing in it any information useful
for the oversight of the transcription assignment (the assignment
from the schedule can be scraped/copied and placed on the page). Save
the file and return to Zotero's menu. You have successfully
created your first composition in Zotero and saved it to a folder
managed by Zotero.
Transcription assignments:
1)
find your transcription assignments on the seminar schedule. For
the purposes of demonstration see:
http://mdhistory.net/msaref06/Massachusetts_Historical_Society/tif/html/webster-0700.html
and the following page.
2) the pages are transcribed
using [] to indicate anything that is not on the original page,
including expansion of contractions, footnotes, etc. The transcript
can be viewed without a user name and password, but to edit any pages
you will need to log in with a user name and password obtained from
the instructor, or using the email option on the site to
request one.
3) create a folder on the root of your flash
drive labeled with your last name, initials, and the abbreviation
'trans'. For example: papenfuse_e_transcription was used with
this example. Save each page you transcribe to that folder by
placing your cursor in the window where your transcription appears,
right click, select this frame and save frame as, saving the frame to
the directory you have just created, labeling the files as they are
labeled in the frame (for this example: the first transcribed file is
labeled webster-0700). Save all your transcription this
way. Use the green plus sign button in Zotero to link to these
files. You may then edit the files you saved following the
instructions above for composition (Use the go to file tab in
the right hand column of Zotero, right click on the file and begin
editing). Any further editing/transcription work done for this
page can be scraped from your local file and copied on to the new
'live' file at editonline.us, or, if you prefer, any changes or
corrections can be made on the live file, saving it back to the local
file over the previous version.
Using this letter as an
example of how to further take notes, you might find the author
intriguing. Check all the searchable secondary and primary
sources provided to see if James Roosevelt is mentioned. You will
discover that Judge Sullivan in his book on the Webster trial accepts
the letter as genuine and quotes it in full. Having downloaded
the transcription to a local file, you can take the text from the pdf
of Sullivan and add it to your notes for that page in the far right
column of Zotero (assuming you have highlighted the transcription).
Note that not all pdfs have searchable and thus copyable text.
In those cases you will need to take your notes on the zotero
note pad provided or on an html of your own creation using the white
board approach outlined above.You might also want to use the web to
see what could be found about James Roosevelt and possibly challenge
the authenticity of the letter. There is a Wikipedia article
about the James Roosevelt who was the father of FDR. At this
point in your note taking the questions mostly center on the
authenticity of the letter and how it is/ought to be employed by the
historian.
Image acquisition/editing and incorporation
into compositions
Most anything you will want to download,
edit, annotate and incorporate into your editing and writing in the
way of images (gifs, jpgs, tifs, etc.) can be accomplished on the PC
with IRFAN, a free software package. Let's assume that you want
to illustrate the James Roosevelt letter with an image of Roosevelt.
First download the Wikipedia article about him to your Zotero
folder using the camera button. Bring the file into the
browser from your locally captured file or stay with the Wikipedia
version. Right click on the photograph of Roosevelt and save it
in your folder as a zotero image. Access the file from Zotero
that you just saved. You can then locate the file using show file,
right click and edit it with IRFAN, adding text, correcting color,
etc. In the current version of Editonline.us, you will not be
able to insert the image into your edited text on line, but you can
into the text when you download it to zotero. Copy the image
into memory. Locate the local file of your transcribed page,
open it in Open Office Writer Portable, and use the ctl V key
combination, or the insert function to place the image where you want
it with any bracketed annotation you might want to provide.
Note
that IRFAN is versatile and can convert images from and to almost any
format including the creation of pdfs, the most universal way of
communicating documents via email.