How to build a publications page / academic website?

Hi,
I am new to Omeka, so please be kind :-)
Anyone who has to keep a personal academic website with a publications page updated knows how time consuming this can be. I have all my publications in Zotero but have to "manually" edit/update my html publications page, which is simply a list with no database features (e.g. list only journal papers, aggregate by conference, etc). Thus, I became interested in rewriting my academic website using a CMS, and came to Omeka because it is listed as a CMS that integrates with Zotero. However, I cannot figure out how that integration works, even though I have installed the Coins and the simple page plugins.
Would anyone provide me with some examples/hints on how to import items from a Zotero library or to build an Omeka collection that is integrated with it? If this is not possible, is there any other way of integrating an Omeka website with Zotero?

If no integration is possible then I would have to keep my plain html publication list as a normal page (i.e. using the simple pages plugin). In this case, please send me any hints/links on how to make its items (bibliographical references) individually "importable" to Zotero by anyone visiting the page. After many attempts, I failed to figure that out from the Coins plugin documentation or by browsing this forum.

Thanks very much for any help you could provide on this!

Paulo Costa
Fairfax, VA

Hi Paulo,

The COinS plugin allows Zotero to pull in bibliographic metadata from Omeka, not the other way around. We're working on a plugin that imports Zotero libraries and collections into Omeka. We expect to release it publicly within the next few months.

In order to work, the COinS plugin needs access to item objects, which aren't available in Simple Pages pages.

Jim

Jim,

Thanks very much for the very helpful insights.
I though about creating bibliography entries as items, which would the basis for the publications page. However, doing so while keeping myself future-proof with new Zotero plugins didn't seem to be a trivial task so I'll hold that website project until I hear about the plugin you have mentioned.

All the best,
Paulo

Hello,

I have activated the COinS plug-in on a new omeka website I am currently testing (version 1.2.1). But the plug-in does not seem to work: my Zotero application does not see any of the items I added to my library. Could it be because I'm using the Zotero Beta 2.1 version. I notice that on other Omeka websites it does not "sense" the data either.

Looking forward to receiviny your advice,

Radu

I'm also having problems with the COinS plugin not working on 1.2.1 - The Zotero Firefox plugin doesn't pick up the details, and upon looking at the source, it doesn't look like any COinS data is being generated. Any hints or tips welcomed!

Thanks,

Tom

Tom,

Make sure the COinS plugin is installed. Does the plugin work on the admin interface? The plugin will not work if you are using a public theme that does not contain the following hooks:

public_append_to_items_show
public_append_to_items_browse_each

Jim

Thanks Jim,

I'm experimenting with the Rhythm theme. Is there a theme where I can see an example of how it's done?

Tom

I just discovered that the Rhythm theme does not have the necessary hook to generate a COinS span. We'll fix this for the next release. I recommend waiting for the update, but you could add the following code near the end of omeka/themes/rhythm/items/show.php:

<?php echo plugin_append_to_items_show(); ?>

Thanks for finding this bug!

Jim

I was losing hope on getting a reply to my question up until Tom asked his question...

Actually I was also using the Rhythm theme, have now tried to switch to another theme and the data is now picked up by Zotero.

Thanks Tom, thanks Jim!

Regards,

Radu

Thanks for the forthcoming fix!

I added the hook, and it created the COinS metadata and also wrote out code for a Google Docs viewer (I have the plugin enabled), so that I had it displayed twice. Therefore I can't add the code at the bottom of the page.

Also, Zotero doesn't seem to pick up the data, but I guess that's an issue for a different forum :-)

Thanks,

Tom