Doing History with Zotero and Obsidian: Archival Research

welcome to doing history with victoria

and obsidia today i will explain how to

use these tools to do archival research

historians often ask about the latest

tools for copying and analyzing archival

documents their concern is usually to

scan as many documents as possible to

store the pdfs and metadata securely and

to find them easily when writing a draft

a scanner up zotero and obsidian can

help with that

zotero is a reference manager that

stores all your research documents in

one place obsidian is a customizable

note-taking app that interfaces with

zotero

i prefer them to the alternatives

tropi is another app that that stores

archival photos and it's pretty

sophisticated but it does not store your

secondary sources it is not a note

taking app or reference manager

devon think is another popular

alternative it stores a variety of

documents and notes but it does not link

up with the reference manager as well as

obsidian so it's not as convenient for

writing

to do my archival research i created my

own setup this is what i'm showing today

my website explains it in more detail

the archival documents i will work with

today come from the albert johnson

papers at the bankrupt library at the

university of california berkeley albert

johnson was an american film critic

historian and the programmer for the san

francisco film festival he traveled

widely in asia and africa as well as

europe and i'm particularly interested

in his travels to tashkent for the

festival of asian and african cinema in

the 70s when i was at bancroft i used

scanner pro on the iphone

scan all documents from each archival

folder into its own pdf file

there are many other options for apps

these apps can automatically align your

documents so you can take photos quickly

they usually also offer optical

character recognition or cr

so any type documents will be searchable

although they cannot ocr the handwritten

documents like the one in the picture

in the archives i take photos of as many

documents as i can and at the end of the

day i end up with pdfs of several

archival folders today i will just use

one folder as an example

first i add a folder to the chair

i named the pdf

uh to include archive abbreviation it's

right here

agp for albert johnson papers archive

location

folder one box one folder 15

and the short description of what's in

the folder in this case correspondence

from 1972.

i drag the pdf into zotero

then control click on the mac and choose

create parent item

and then manual entry

to create an item

then i clean up

to make a

folder item i delete the pdf

i add the date to sort properly

in archive and location archive fields i

enter information as it should appear in

the citation for any document with that

within that folder

i change

item type to manuscript

so it will be identifiable as an

archival item in the list view

i add tags

type of source

folder and primary for primary source

a subject tag albert johnson

and the name of my research project

to keep track of track of collection

abbreviations i create items for every

collection i intend to examine

this item will have a full name of the

collection of course

also information about the depository

dates abbreviation and the link to the

finding aid

i use manuscript item time for these

items but tag them as collection this is

also useful because you can export these

collection items into archive collection

section of your bibliography

to keep my folder items easily

accessible

i create the save search folder for the

item by advanced search

uh set up a search for i archive

is

ajp

and tag

is folder

then click save search

enter the name of this if search

and you're done and this kelp helps me

to keep track of what i scanned i don't

delete this folder items or any pages in

the pdfs as i process the folders

further

next step is to extract one document

from the folder and add it to the chat

there are many different documents

within the folder

but i know that the first letter an

invitation to the dashcam film festival

i will definitely need

to extract the file i can draw click on

the fonda item and choose so file and

then open in preview

and drag the pages i need

to the folder on my system

then i just control click and choose

duplicate item this allows me to

reproduce archive and location

information automatically

i drag the new pdf on top of the item to

add it

and then in the pdf view i changed in

the metadata

to reflect the document

so february 18 for the date

and this is the author of the letter

called

and albert johnson's recipient

last thing to do is to delete the tag

folder

to

make sure

that

my save search for folders doesn't

include individual items

now i need to annotate the document

i open it in pdf view

the left pane will display annotations

i highlight as many passages as i i

think is necessary for separate notes

it is better to correct any ocr errors

in zotero before the export because you

can compare text to the pdf right here

now you're ready to import annotations

into obsidian

before you do it is important to

remember that different annotations from

the same source actually might belong in

different places in your draft so i need

to split the imported notes with all

annotations into several research notes

pay attention to the keyboard commands

that appear in the lower left corner of

the screen as i type the shortcuts

i use a command r shortcut to call up

zotero search from obsidian

then type keywords to find the source

and hit enter

i choose the source to add the node with

the tera annotations

this node will have all source metadata

including tags it will also

automatically place the date for the

letter into the start date field for the

event

add links to two notes i already have

for the tashkent film festival

and for albert johnson

these nodes function as a name and event

index

now i select a text that belongs in a

separate note and press command z hotkey

in the prompt i type the title for my

new note about the bureaucracy at the

dashcam festival

the new research note

has source metadata tags and the text

you selected and the page number for the

annotation

in the page number field

now i go back and clean up the original

note

i delete the text i don't need

it's part of the import

i moved the link to the new node to the

connection sections

which is

where it should be

i use markdown code double equal signs

to highlight the most significant part

of the annotation

i add the title to the node that

describes its significance that johnson

was invited to the festival as a special

guest

also highlight the significant part of

the other note

the links i added

allow me to browse the notes via graph

for example if i click on the tashkent

festival note i will see all research

notes people and films related to that

event

the note i added also has

a link that takes me to the original

annotation in zotero

now that you imported your notes you can

search and sort them as you prepare for

writing

the regular obsidian search works well

in general i can find all notes

containing the word johnson but i will

only be able to sort them by title or

date modified

but if i use the command s shortcut

i can get to a custom search where i can

search by keyword johnson and sort by

multiple fields

including

author title

start date for the event

both in descending and ascending order

you can also search by source fields for

example i just added a node where

kaiyoumov is the author of the letter

but i can also check if any of my

sources have kaiomov as a recipient in

there too

they also show that his first name is

aziz

the source i just imported only had his

initial i can open any found node in the

search view but i can also press the

command n shortcut to open it in a view

where i can see the local graph for the

node and continue to browse through the

link nodes via the graph as well

to sum up

the workflow helps to keep track of scan

sources enter metadata so you can cite

them correctly and break the material

into individual research notes you can

then process them tag index link and add

your own comments then search and sort

them to slot into particular section of

your draft and start writing

to try these features you can you'll

need to download zotero obsidian and the

starter vault for historians that i made

all these tools are free

you download default the zip file from

the github page

open um and

you have to change the folder title

after

so you don't really need master

move to the folder that contains all

your obsidian vaults

and then choose open folder as a vault

in obsidian

choose to

trust my plugins

and start working

the vault comes with sample notes and

directions on how to use it

enjoy