Reconciling Zotero and CSL Item Types

CSL Development
1

Right now, CSL has the following item types:

 "article-magazine"
 > "article-newspaper"
 > "article-journal"
 > "bill"
 > "figure"
 > "graphic"
 > "interview"
 > "legislation"
 > "legal_case"
 > "manuscript"
 > "map"
 > "motion_picture"
 > "musical_score"
 > "pamphlet"
 > "paper-conference"
 > "patent"
 > "personal_communication"
 > "report"
 > "review"
 > "review-book"
 > "song"
 > "speech"
 > "thesis"
 > "treaty"
 > "webpage"

Zotero has the following item types:

book
bookSection
journalArticle
magazineArticle
newspaperArticle
thesis
letter
manuscript
interview
film
artwork
webpage
report
bill
case
hearing
patent
statute
email
map
blogPost
instantMessage
forumPost
audioRecording
presentation
videoRecording
tvBroadcast
radioBroadcast
podcast
computerProgram
conferencePaper
document
encyclopediaArticle
dictionaryEntry

Most of these I can map to CSL item types. Most conspicuously
missing, however, are encyclopediaArticle and dictionaryEntry. I know
that in most styles they are formatted the same way as book chapters,
and “chapter” should definitely be the fallback type, but is there a
good reason not to have them? Is it completely inconceivable that
some styles should require that they be formatted differently? What
about the other item types (e.g., email, which is formatted slightly
different in Chicago, or blogPost, which is in the Chicago Manual of
Style but doesn’t get formatted differently there)?

See also Zotero ticket #699 (https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/699).

Simon

2

I’ve been asking to work this issue out for the past year. To my mind,
the problem is really we need a policy that guides when we add a type,
and a procedure by which to do that. Because while if you read through
Chicago you can probably identify somewhere between 50 and 100 types
(depending on how you define them), I’m betting if you look through
other style guides (say BlueBook or AWLD in law, or APA, or some
medical style) you’ll find long additional lists. It becomes something
like an endless black hole.

I’m less worried about this problem with CSL than I am with the data
encoding, but we do obviously have to be able to align them.

One solution is we just add them ad hoc. Whenever it seems like
someone might need something, add it.

I dunno; been a long day. Any thoughts?

Bruce

3

OK, for now here’s how I’ve resolved the need to tokenize, and the
request for the additional types:

cs-types = “article”
> “article-magazine”
> “article-newspaper”
> “article-journal”
> “bill”
> “book”
> “chapter”
> “entry”
> “entry-dictionary”
> “entry-encylopedia”
> “figure”
> “graphic”
> “interview”
> “legislation”
> “legal_case”
> “manuscript”
> “map”
> “motion_picture”
> “musical score”
> “pamphlet”
> “paper-conference”
> “patent”
> “post”
> “post-weblog”
> “personal_communication”
> “report”
> “review”
> “review-book”
> “song”
> “speech”
> “thesis”
> “treaty”
> “webpage”

Make sure to adjust your styles and code as necessary.

We still need to answer the questions I earlier asked.

Bruce