<h2 id="zotero"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#zotero"></a>Zotero</h2>
The below was scooped, with permission, from Dr. Graham's Hist 1900 Github. It includes a couple of videos by Dr. Graham. I am using these as I do not personally use Zotero with my Obsidian, but it is beneficial if you do use Zotero.
<a href="https://zotero.org">Zotero</a> is a very powerful reference manager and pdf reader/annotation environment. We are going to set up Zotero so that when you encounter material online, or in library catalogues, or in academic databases, it will ingest that material with the proper bibliographic information.
Once you have some articles in Zotero, you can also annotate them while reading them - highlight with different colours, and leave notes stuck all over them.
I have already configured Obsidian for you so that you can get it to call over to Zotero and extract the citation, the bibliographic reference, or the annotations for you. This was always the hardest part of reading online - liberating our annotations! So here's what you have to do.
<h2 id="getting-zotero-set-up"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#getting-zotero-set-up"></a>Getting Zotero Set Up</h2>
<ol>
<li>Go to <a href="https://www.zotero.org/download/">Zotero</a> and install BOTH the Zotero for your desktop AND the Zotero Connector for your browser. The first is the actual reference management platform, the second is the piece of code that lets your browser sense when there is bibliographic metadata &#x26; pdfs on a website (it adds a button to your browser - press it and boom, the material is downloaded into Zotero. Most of the time.)</li>
<li>Now get the <code>Better BibTex</code> plugin for zotero. It is available <a href="https://github.com/retorquere/zotero-better-bibtex/releases/latest">here</a> You want to click on the file ending with 'xpi' to download it. <img src="https://github.com/shawngraham/obsidian-hist1900c-student-vault/blob/main/_media/better-bib-tex-link.png?raw=true" alt="better bibtex link"></li>
<li>Then, in Zotero, you'll need to install that plugin:
<ol>
<li>In the main menu go to Tools > Add-ons</li>
<li>Select ‘Extensions’ 6. Click on the gear in the top-right corner and choose ‘Install Add-on From File…’</li>
<li>Choose .xpi that you’ve just downloaded, click ‘Install’</li>
<li>Restart Zotero</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
Phew! What this plugin does is it facilitates the creation of 'citation keys' for your references. You can think of these as unique knicknames that will instantly identify one reference, and one reference only. Imagine you had three articles by me, all published in 2022. Things could get confusing. But with BetterBibTex installed in zotero, when you drop my three pdfs into your zotero main panel, BetterBibTex will automatically rename them to <code>graham2022a, graham2022b, graham2022c</code>.
THEN, when we create notes here in Obsidian, your notes can be tied back directly to the source without confusion. That's actually a big deal; making notes and losing track of where they come from has driven many a grad student mad.
<h2 id="importing-your-notes-from-zotero-to-obsidian"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#importing-your-notes-from-zotero-to-obsidian"></a>Importing your notes from Zotero to Obsidian</h2>
As I said, I've already pre-configured this vault with everything you need to import new materials. Let's try something out. Make sure Zotero is open on your machine before we do this next bit, and make sure you've imported an article or two in there so we have something to work with. If you don't have anything yet, go to the Vannevar Bush article in your browser, hit your Zotero import button to ingest it: <img src="https://github.com/shawngraham/obsidian-hist1900c-student-vault/blob/main/_media/import-button.png?raw=true" alt="import-button.png"> but know that the icon changes depending on the kind of resource. The article metadata will appear in your Zotero library. Now we do the next bit.
In Obsidian, make a new note with cmd+n or ctrl+n.
Then, hit cmd+p or ctrl+p to open the 'command panel'. <img src="https://github.com/shawngraham/obsidian-hist1900c-student-vault/blob/main/_media/command-panel.png?raw=true" alt="command-panel.png">
Start typing 'zotero'. It will bring you up a series of commands;
<img src="https://github.com/shawngraham/obsidian-hist1900c-student-vault/blob/main/_media/zotero-commands.png?raw=true" alt="zotero-commands.png">
the two that are most useful for us (you can explore the others later) are 'Annotation Extraction' and 'Full Reference'. Select 'Full Reference'. The red zotero citation search bar will appear; start typing the name of a paper you might have in there - eg, B..U..S.. H and then select the reference. ^78e9e7
Boom! The full reference appears.
Now let's make some annotations on a pdf in Zotero. A paper of mine that you can practice on is available through the Humanities Commons, called: <a href="https://mla.hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:19553/">Fleshing Out the Bones</a> . Go to that link in your browser. Hit the 'Save to Zotero' button (notice that the icon has changed slightly). Now, in Zotero, you will have the full bibliographic information and the pdf of the paper: <img src="https://github.com/shawngraham/obsidian-hist1900c-student-vault/blob/main/_media/fleshing-in-zotero.png?raw=true" alt="fleshing-in-zotero.png">
Double click on the pdf, and zotero's pdf reader will open the paper. Make some annotations. Highlight passages of text with different colours. I'd suggest using the following colours (it's what my code is set up for) to indicate why you're making an annotation: ^1760dc
YELLOW: confusion/questions
GREEN: agree
RED: diasgree
BLUE: definitions/concepts
PURPLE: relevant/important
Explore the options for marking up that page. Everything saves automatically.
Just make a few. Then, back here in Obsidian, we're going to hit cmd/ctrl + p to bring up the command palette, then type Zotero to bring up the zotero commands, then select 'Annotation Extraction.' The familiar red zotero bar will come up for you to search for the article we want, so type in 'graham' or whatever. When you find it, hit enter. This will trigger the annotation extraction code; after a moment, the pop-ups will have disappeared. Look in the <code>1-inbox</code> folder:
<img src="https://github.com/shawngraham/obsidian-hist1900c-student-vault/blob/main/_media/annotations-extracted.png?raw=true" alt="annotations-extracted.png">
And if you click on that note, you'll find all of your annotations there, with headings according to the colour you used to annotate.
One last thing - there's a command called <code>zotero-integration: insert notes into current document</code>. This doesn't insert your annotations. Rather, over in Zotero, if you click on an item, there's a tab called 'Notes'. Within Zotero, if you right-click on a pdf that you have annotated, and select 'add note from annotations', your annotations will be transfered to that 'Notes' tab. Then over in Obsidian you use the <code>zotero-integration: insert notes into current document</code> command, those notes are copied over.
<h2 id="two-more-videos-of-the-vault-in-action"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#two-more-videos-of-the-vault-in-action"></a>Two more videos of the vault in action</h2>
In the following video, I show how annotations made in the Zotero pdf reader can be imported directly into the vault.
<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 62.5%; height: 0;"><iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/01563c07b9bd4fa3aadff39ca018b399" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe></div>
In this video, I show how annotations made in the Zotero pdf reader can be copied into the 'notes' pane within Zotero, and then copied into Obsidian. The difference in these two approaches comes down to which final output you prefer.
<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 62.5%; height: 0;"><iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/c0c612eab06c472abf7b557dfe435b77" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe></div>

Welcome

1. Course Description

2. Learning Outcomes

3. Course Schedule

4. Evaluation

5. Course Communications

6. Common Regulations

6. Contact the Professor

how the course tech is built; how the course came to be

7. Colophon

8. Reuse

Orientation and Digital Setup

Week 1

Personal Knowledge Management and Linked Thinking

Week 2

Thinking about the “Craft” of Digital History

Week 3

Crusading into the Digital Age of LLMs

Week 4

Consolidation & Check-In Week

Week 5

Digital Excavation

Week 6

Week 8

Defining Data, 'Dark' Data, & Identifiers

Week 7

Seeing the Past?

Week 9

Week 10

Authority and Positionality in Your Digital Research

Week 11

Publicly Crafting a Historical Argument

Week 12

Open-Access Notebook Workshop

Week 13

Exit Ticket

Week 14

1 Setting up your vault

2 Create your first note

3 Templater Plugiin

4 What Goes into a Note?

5 Properties

06 Hypothesis

07 The Simplest Online Memex Worfklow

08 How To Read An Academic Article

09 Import your Hypothesis Annotations

10 Zotero

11 Where to Find help

13 Text Formatting

Introduction to your vault

index note

Atomic Note

Literature Note

Process Note

Weekly Journal

Topic Proposal

Weekly Work & Tasks

Consolidation Reflection

Open Access Notebook/Memex

Benchmarking Your Memex

Exit Ticket/Final Project

1 Welcome to Crafting Digital History Transcript

2 Obsidian User Interface (UI) Guide

3 Templater and Hotkeys Setup

4 How to use PDF++

5 Canvas Core Plugin Introductory Tutorial

6 Hypothes.is and Annotating the Web

7 Omnisearch Plugin for Obsidian

8 How to Use Process Notes for Digital Research Projects in Obsidian

9 Properties, Identifiers and Data Management with Obsidian Core Plugin Bases

10 Week 13 and Exit Ticket Update

1 Welcome to Crafting Digital History

2 Some Logistical Updates

3 Welcome to Week Two

4 What is Digital History?

5 Crusading into the Digital Age of LLMs

6 Week Four Exercise Example

7 Using Obsidian for Digital History Research and Note-Making

8 Reflection Feedback Update and Hypothes.is

9 Week Five Update

10 Consolidation Reflection Submission

11 Module Two Wrangling and Critiquing

12 Week 7 Update

13 Week 9 Welcome Back

14 Consolidation Week Number 2

15 Week 11 Authority and Positionality in Digital Research

16 Week 12 Publicly Crafting a Historical Argument

17 Week 13  Peer-Review of Open Access Notebooks

18 Week 14 Congratulations

1. Course Overview

Module 1 Contextualizing

Module 2 Wrangling & Critiquing

Module 3 Arguing & Communicating

2. Schedule

01  memex help

8. Course Files

3. Tutorials

4. Assessment

5. VideoTutorials

Crafting Digital History

News