*This is the sec­ond entry in a series of posts explor­ing the poten­tial use of Zotero for spe­cial col­lec­tions research. To view all post in the series, see Zotero & Spe­cial Col­lec­tions. For a very brief intro­duc­tion to import­ing files into Zotero, see Zotero Basics Video Tour.

Zotero is an excel­lent resource for orga­niz­ing and stor­ing files while con­duct­ing research in a spe­cial col­lec­tions library. With a lap­top, wi-fi, and cam­era, one can quickly build a sophis­ti­cated, search­able data­base from the com­fort of a read­ing room chair. This post will high­light one such approach by review­ing the begin­ning stages of a research project on Princeton’s col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can constitutions.

Please note, click­ing the screen cap­tures will expand the images.

In Decem­ber of 1977, H.P. Kraus, one of the most influ­en­tial rare book deal­ers of the 20th century, donated a sig­nif­i­cant col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tions to Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity. Cat­a­logue 146, A Col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tions: States, Ter­ri­to­ries, South Amer­ica (H.P. Kraus, n.d.), pro­vides a check­list for the col­lec­tion and serves as the log­i­cal start­ing point for a research project on Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tions at Princeton.

The first step of this project is to cre­ate a col­lec­tion folder in Zotero (titled Con­sti­tu­tions) and then import the library cat­a­log record for A Col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tions. For mul­ti­ple rea­sons, such as cap­tur­ing accu­rate call num­bers and per­sis­tent URLs, I rec­om­mend that Prince­ton users import cat­a­log records from SearchIt@PUL as opposed to the library Main Catalog.

I also have a PDF copy of A Col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tions on my desk­top. Zotero allows files to be attached to indi­vid­ual cita­tion records, which Zotero calls “child” attach­ments, so I upload a child attach­ment to the cat­a­log record so that I always have quick access to the PDF file.

By click­ing on the PDF icon in my Zotero account, I can open the cat­a­log and begin research­ing titles to request to the read­ing room.

In this exam­ple, we will focus on num­ber 117, Con­sti­tu­tions of the Sate of Wis­con­sin (Madi­son, W.T., Beriah Brown, Printer, 1846).

The next step is to locate the library cat­a­log record for the 1846 Con­sti­tu­tions of the Sate of Wis­con­sin and import the record into the Con­sti­tu­tions col­lec­tion folder.

I attach a child note to the Wis­con­sin con­sti­tu­tion record not­ing the ref­er­ence that led me to the work (Kraus 117). When using ref­er­ence bib­li­ogra­phies or dealer cat­a­logs in a research project, I always attach a ref­er­ence note to the cor­re­spond­ing bib­li­o­graphic record. In this case, if I copy the 1846 Con­sti­tu­tions of the Sate of Wis­con­sin record to a sep­a­rate folder (a research project on Wis­con­sin imprints, for exam­ple), the ref­er­ence cita­tion will travel with the record, even if the cited bib­li­og­ra­phy or dealer cat­a­logue does not. With the cita­tion to the cat­a­logue attached to the indi­vid­ual bib­li­o­graphic record, I can do a quick key­word search of my entire Zotero data­base to locate the cited work, in this case the actual PDF cat­a­logue. (Note: I should have cited “Kraus, Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tions, 117″ as I have more than one H.P. Kraus cat­a­logue in my Zotero account, but I only noticed this over­sight after tak­ing the screen cap­tures for the post.)

While view­ing the 1846 Con­sti­tu­tions of the Sate of Wis­con­sin in the read­ing room, I notice an own­er­ship inscrip­tion on the verso of the last leaf that is not men­tioned in the Kraus cat­a­logue. Zotero allows for the attach­ment of image files, so I pho­to­graph the inscrip­tion and upload a JPEG as a child attach­ment. Click­ing on the attached JPEG in Zotero will open the image in the browser.

Click­ing on the browser image will expand the file to a 100% view, which is often help­ful for deci­pher­ing hand writ­ing (though not needed in this case due to the size of the inscription).

I am uncer­tain about the first ini­tial (I sus­pect the let­ter “R”), but I clearly see G. Carpenter(s) as the name, and the inscrip­tion also notes Albion, so I con­duct a Google Book search for “G. Car­pen­ter” Albion Wis­con­sin. The first search result is the His­tory of Dane County, Wis­con­sin (Chicago: West­ern His­tor­i­cal Com­pany, 1880) which looks promising.

Click­ing on the link, the book appears rel­e­vant as it men­tions a Rus­sell G. Car­pen­ter who set­tled in Albion in 1843 (four years before the date of the inscription).

Zotero allows for cap­tur­ing of web pages, so I add a screen cap­ture as a child attach­ment to the Wis­con­sin con­sti­tu­tion record. That way, even if Google were to remove the ebook from Google Books, I will have a per­ma­nent record of the Town of Albion entry in my Zotero account.

The entry in the His­tory of Dane County, Wis­con­sin con­firms my sus­pi­cion that the first ini­tial is an “R.” With the full name, I can now con­duct a web search for “Rus­sell G. Car­pen­ter” Albion Wis­con­sin. Again, the first result looks promising.

Click­ing on the link pro­vides genealog­i­cal notes for Rus­sell Gard­ner Car­pen­ter, so I cre­ate another screen cap­ture as a child attachment.

The note cites a Sab­bath Recorder obit­u­ary where we learn that Rus­sell G. Car­pen­ter passed away on Octo­ber 8, 1893, at the age of 78, and among other things, that “dur­ing the lat­ter years of his life Brother Car­pen­ter was not in obser­vance of the Sabbath.”

Hav­ing sat­is­fied my curios­ity, for the time being, on the R. G. Car­pen­ter inscrip­tion (I’ll search more author­i­ta­tive sources later), I decide to search the title of the con­sti­tu­tion in Google. The first search result is a link to an early man­u­script ver­sion of the con­sti­tu­tion housed in the Wis­con­sin His­tor­i­cal Society.

I want to take a look at this later as well, so I cre­ate another child attach­ment with a link to the Wis­con­sin His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety page.

I now have seven child attach­ments asso­ci­ated with the bib­li­o­graphic record for the 1846 Con­sti­tu­tions of the Sate of Wis­con­sin. Import­ing all of this data into Zotero took a mat­ter of min­utes, and other than retriev­ing the JPEG files, I didn’t even need to leave my browser to cap­ture the data in Zotero and upload the data to my server.

Time to move on to a sec­ond title, Kraus 116, the Con­sti­tu­tion of the State of Wash­ing­ton (Seat­tle, s.n., 1889).

There are 121 items listed in A Col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tions. Below is a snap­shot view of my Con­sti­tu­tion folder with 7 indi­vid­ual bib­li­o­graphic records and mul­ti­ple notes and attachments.

Clearly orga­niz­ing and stor­ing all of my research data for the project in one loca­tion will save me a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time and spare me the need­less frus­tra­tion of hav­ing to retrace my steps in order to locate my files and notes. As the data is stored on a Prince­ton server, Web Space (see: Using Zotero at Prince­ton ), and since the access point is my Fire­fox browser (Zotero also has a stand­alone ver­sion com­pat­i­ble with Chrome and Safari), my data­base is acces­si­ble from my lap­top and office and home PCs. All of the bib­li­o­graphic cita­tions (click­ing on the cita­tions will open the SearchIt@PUL cat­a­log record so I can request the item to the read­ing room), ref­er­ence bib­li­ogra­phies, dealer cat­a­logues, research notes, online files, images, and even­tu­ally my Word doc­u­ment, once I begin writ­ing, are all con­ve­niently orga­nized and stored in one loca­tion that is imme­di­ately syn­chro­nized and eas­ily acces­si­ble across mul­ti­ple machines.