Zotero 101 - Obsidian Community talks

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21

You are right, of course. It is right here:

That seems like a humble way of saying that Mdnotes is better because it has access to everything in the zotero database :wink: But I do agree that using the citations plugin still has its place for quickly referring to books and articles that are in zotero (and which you may not even have read yet).

So I think for it to work well with mdnotes, I should make sure that it produces notes whose file names are identical with the metadata notes created by mdnotes, right? - It obviously depends on what exactly you want to achieve, but I agree with your approach of keeping your own notes (in obsidian) separate from the literature metadata and annotations so as to be able to update those without losing your notes (in obsidian). So let’s stick with that approach for now.

As I think about it, I actually see two ways of integrating citations and mdnotes.

  1. One is the one that came to mind first (above): use the same file name for the metadata-note in both citations and mdnotes. You can refer to that file even when it doesn’t exist yet or you can let citations create a preliminary version which will be overwritten once you export annotations via mdnotes.

  ┌─────────┐       ┌───────┐
  │citations│       │mdnotes│
  └────┬────┘       └─┬─────┘
       │              │
     writes      (over)writes
       │              │
     ┌─▼──────────────▼─────────────────┐
     │ main note-file  (incl. metadata) │
     └─┬────────────────────────────────┘
       │
     links to
       │
       │  ┌───-─────────────┐
       ├──►annotations file1│
       │  └───-─────────────┘
       │
       │  ┌──────-──────────┐
       └──►annotations file2│
          └───────-─────────┘
  1. The second one is perhaps better, but adds some complexity. Instead of letting both plugins write the same main-note-file, which then links to the annotation files, we could add another level in the note hierarchy: citations would then create the main-note file which links to the mdnotes metadata file as well as all the annotation files. Only mdnotes overwrites these. And thanks to your ingenious idea to create the block reference id by hashing the annotation, all links and transclusions will still work after mdnotes updates the annotations (as long as annotations are not changes but only added).

    ┌─────────┐   ┌────┐   ┌─────────┐
    │citations│   │user│   │ mdnotes │
    └────┬────┘   └─┬──┘   └─┬─────┬─┘
         │          │        │     │
       creates    edits    writes writes
         │          │        │     │ 
       ┌─▼──────────▼─────┐  │     │
       │ main note-file   │  │     │
       └─┬────────────────┘  │     │
         │                   │     │
   links to/transcludes      │     │
         │                   │     │
         │      ┌────────────▼───┐ │
         ├──────► metadata file  │ │
         │      └────────────────┘ │
         │                         │
         │      ┌──────────────────▼─┐
         └──────► annotation files   │
                └────────────────────┘

In fact, with that (second) approach you don’t even have to split the metadata and annotation files and just write them into a single file, depending on preference.

What I like about approach 2 is that it has a dedicated space for my own post-reading reflections in the main note-file. Integrating the annotations i make in the pdf during reading with more elaborate reflections in obsidian after (and sometimes already during) reading has been a major headache for me. It looks like this could be a solution.

Does this make any sense? (I haven’t tried it in practice yet…)

BTW: the diagrams show the files for a single article/book in zotero.

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22

Not necessarily better, just different! If you don’t need access to those things, the citations plugin might be better, since it’s easier to set up if you’re not very technical, and you can trigger everything from within Obsidian without needing to configure (the sometimes extremely confusing and unfriendly) Zotero settings.

It does, I think! That’s roughly what I would’ve suggested: You can create your “main” note with the citations plugin and export your annotations using the Export to markdown menu in the little yellow Zotero notes. If you use multiple files like I do, in mdnotes, you can automatically transclude/link the annotations into your main note. I think people have managed to set up templates with the citations plugin to do this as well, but I’m not familiar with how! However, if you are using a single note with everything (metadata, annotations, etc), the citations plugin is also able to include everything in your note (I don’t know how to do that however).

In the end, as with all these things, it’s mostly a matter of preferences and of willingness/ability to invest some effort in the configuration.

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23

I am old and really trying to understand this chat. I read books (PDFs and epubs). I have zotero and Obsidian. I want to read, highlight, add my own notes and the move them to Obsidian. I would like to include the citation and a link to the page where it came from. Is there a post or website or blog or book that could give me a step by step on how to do this? Things never used to be this hard but my brain keeps forgetting. (thus need for obsidian). Maybe I should be using Calibre instead. Maybe I should put books inside Obsidian but I am afraid it would get too large.

24

Maybe you don’t know it yet: There is a very good tutorial by Danny Hatcher on Youtube: Zotero Obsidian Integration - YouTube, or on Zotero Obsidian Integration - Danny Hatcher. I don’t have experience with Zotero/Obsidian, but the video seems to be very easy to understand.

Another post by Alexandra Phelan: An Academic Workflow: Zotero & Obsidian | by Alexandra Phelan | Medium. A little more technical, but it shows different aspects, e.g. how to collect the literature notes in your vault via Dataview.

Hope this helps. A.