Cite Caddy

What this server is for

Cite Caddy gives an assistant full read/write access to one Zotero reference library — the user's personal library or a group library. Use it for literature management: finding references, adding new ones, organising them into collections and tags, reading attachment full text and notes, and producing formatted bibliographies (any CSL style) or exports such as BibTeX and CSL-JSON.

Zotero concepts to know

• Items are references (journal article, book, thesis, web page, …). Each item type has its own set of valid fields and creator roles (author, editor, translator, …). When unsure what an item type accepts, look it up instead of guessing.
• Collections are folders. An item can be in many collections at once, and removing it from a collection does not delete it.
• Tags are labels shared across the whole library. Renaming or deleting a tag affects every item that carries it. To change a single item's labels, edit that item's tags.
• Child items: notes and file attachments belong to a parent item.
• Item keys are stable identifiers. Citations inserted with Zotero's Word/LibreOffice plugins point at these keys.

Working safely

• Prefer reversible actions. Moving an item to the trash can be undone. Permanent deletion cannot, and it silently breaks any document citation that points at the item. Only delete permanently when the user explicitly asks for it.
• Reorganise without deleting. Change collections or tags rather than deleting and recreating items. Moving an item to a different library recreates it under a new key, which also breaks existing citations.
• Update in place. When a preprint is formally published, update the existing item (including its item type) instead of creating a new one.
• Concurrency: changes to an existing item or collection must be based on its latest state. If a change is rejected because the item has changed in the meantime, fetch it again and reapply the change. Do not simply resend the same request.
• Retries: for destructive or multi-step operations, reuse the same request identifier when retrying after a timeout, so the operation isn't run twice.
• Deleting a collection also removes its sub-collections, but never the items filed in them.

Tips

• Quick search matches title, creator and year. Enable full-text search to also match inside attached PDFs and notes.
• Files are transferred as base64, because the server runs remotely and cannot read the user's local disk.
• Confirm with the user before any bulk or library-wide change.