Feedback from @lightgivener

[diegodlh]

Copying an email with questions I got from @lightgivener (with her consent) and my replies, as I think they may be useful for others:

If I add a new title through Cita quick statements the author is added as “author name string” only which means I have to connect each title to the correct author QID afterwards or alternatively look up the author QID and add the following line:

    LAST      P50        Q19238781         P1545    "1"

To create new Wikidata items, either using QuickStatements or with the new "automatic" option, Cita relies on Zotero's Wikidata export translator (Zotkat). As you say, this export translator does not disambiguate author name strings to their corresponding Wikidata item. This could be done, but would be nontrivial to implement. There is an issue about this already: #55

Is there a way Cita checks for both title and author? In my case, I have already checked and added all authors but almost none of the titles yet appear in WikiData. Generally authors sometimes already appear in WikiData but almost never titles

@lightgivener, I don't understand your question, sorry. Could you please rephrase it?

Items where the title is too long for the label (f.ex. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q106923254) which is a problem especially with older publications that can have extremely long titles. Zotero does not seem to differentiate between title and subtitle (?). This mean I have to shorten the title for the label entry.

Interesting observation! There seems to be a 250-character limit to Wikidata item labels. Zotkat's Wikidata export translator maps the Zotero's item title to the label of the Wikidata item to be created, even if the title is longer than 250 characters. If the user is using QuickStatements, that should result in an error on the QuickStatements batch. But if the user is using Cita's automatic Wikidata item creation, it fails without providing further information. I just posted an issue (#97) about this (can't fix it right now, unfortunately). Thanks!
A possible solution would be changing the Zotkat's Wikidata export translator so that it uses Zotero's "Short Title" field for cases where the title is longer than 250 characters. I've just proposed this here.

Can you tell us how Cita fetches QID’s? Does it compare Zotero title to WikiData label only? Would it be possible for Cita to check for both WikiData label and title (P1476)?

It uses Wikidata reconciliation service, which is what OpenRefine uses. It uses ISBN, DOI and title for the query. The title is searched for with both search APIs provided by the Wikibase instance: the auto-complete API (which is what the "Search Wikidata" box uses, at the top-right corner of Wikidata) and the search API (which is what https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:Search uses); see here.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be possible to use P1476 (well, actually, it is, but only after a candidate has been retrieved using the label).
As an alternative, related to the previous point, the Short Title could be used as well. I've posted an issue (#98). What do you think?

In quick statements items appear to need a language specifier. Not entirely sure here, but we put it in manually for the example below in French and other titles in German:

   LAST      P1476    fr:"Manuel de l'amateur de la gravure sur bois et sur métal au XVe siècle: Contenant un catalogue des gravures xylographiques se rapportant aux saints et saintes, sujets religieux, mystiques et profanes calendriers, alphabets, armoiries, portraits et suivi d'une specification des impostures: avec des notes critiques, bibliographiques et iconologiques"

For a "citing item" (i.e., an item in your Zotero library) this should be fixed by specifying the language in the Zotero "language" field for that item. This isn't possible for a "cited item", though. Posted an issue (#99). Thanks!

This is just a minor personal preference but the automatic description usually is something like “book published in 1907” or something which might be something that can be adjusted to be more specific or differently phrased based on the available Zotero entry at some point

This description is automatically generated by Zotkat's export translator. If you are using the QuickStatements option, you can manually change it there. But if you are using the automatic creation option, you can only change it in Wikidata once the item has been created. I may have a field where the user could input a custom description before the Wikidata item is created, but I agree this is a matter of preference. Feel free to post an issue about this, if you'd like, so if other people agree this might be a relevant improvement, I or someone else could address it in the future.

When creating journal articles the journal name does not appear as a WikiData statement but only in the label description. In my case that is not a big problem but it means users have to manually add or connect the main journal entry

True. This is related to the author name string point you mentioned above, and is commented in the #55 issue. Maybe it would be nice that Wikidata supported a "published in name string" as it supports a "author name string"?