Indexing a Zotero Folder : Should the DB be synced

DEVONthink
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1

I just decided to try indexing my Zotero folder. The DT database looks to be about 2 GB (I have over 10,000 references and maybe 4000 pdf’s). The Zotero folder is local to my computer, but they are synced thru Zotero’s website (I pay for top tier membership).

The question is, since I have multiple machines, it seems I have two main alternatives:

  1. I can keep each DT database local and indexing its local instance of Zotero
  2. I can move the Zotero data itself to a dropbox folder and then have a DT database syncing that, and I can then sync the DT databases between machines (have been using dropbox for that)

I’ve thought about an option (3), but I think this would require me to update the index pointer everytime I move to my other machine:
3) Keep Zotero as a local folder on each machine (but synced via the Zotero web site), but sync the DT database.

Thoughts on which is preferable? The problem with (1) is that it doesn’t allow me to make notes that get synced.

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What’s worked for me:

  • Zotero synced through my self-hosted WebDAV (I’m already paying for that–no need to pay Zotero as well).
  • Zotero database is local on each of my machines (~/Zotero/ or something like that, at work right now).
  • Zotero storage folder is indexed in DEVONthink with a smart group of just the PDFs
  • DEVONthink syncs to both Macs, my iPhone and iPad via my self-hosted WebDAV with Bonjour as backup.

I’ve had no problems and when I annotate in one place the annotations are synced everywhere the way I need it…

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