Work with items and collections

An item is your library's entry for one resource, such as a book, an article, a manuscript or a recording. It holds the resource's details (title, creators, date and the rest), its tags and notes, and the files attached to it. This page is about the changes you make to items that already exist and to the collections that group them. Adding new items is covered in the Collect pages, and an item's copies and parts in Manage copies and parts.

Open an item by choosing it in the library list. Its pane has a header with Edit item, Cite this item, Share this item and More for this item.

Editing an item's detailsCopy Anchor Link

1. Open the item and choose Edit item. The pane switches to the About tab and shows the details as fields.
2. Change what you need. You can edit the Title, Date, Publication, Publisher, Volume, Issue, Pages, DOI, URL and Abstract here, together with the item's creators and tags.
3. Choose Save changes. Pangur saves the item and confirms it.

Stop editing leaves without saving.

Each creator has a role (author, editor, translator or contributor) and a name, which is either a single Name field or a first and last name. Add creator adds a row and Remove creator takes one away.

The web's editor does not change an item's type, ISBN, ISSN, language or the other fields that belong to one particular type of item. The command line can set any field with pangur edit KEY -f field=value (see the command-line reference), and on iPhone and iPad Edit record… in the item's menu edits its details.

Tags on itemsCopy Anchor Link

A tag is a short label on an item, such as to read or Covenanters, that you can filter the library by. To add one, open Edit item, type in Add a tag… and press Enter or choose Add. The cross on a tag's chip removes it. Either way, choose Save changes afterwards.

Item tags are what Filter by tag and the Tag condition in advanced search work on. Pangur has two other kinds of label that are easy to confuse with them. Research tags name a person, date, place or topic and go on highlights, assistant marks and analysis rather than on items. Topics gather highlights on one theme for planning a piece of writing. Both are described in Highlights, notes and assistant marks.

Notes on an itemCopy Anchor Link

A note is a piece of text attached to an item, such as a summary or a reminder of where you found it. Notes appear at the end of the item's About tab, and the tab's label counts them ("About · 3 notes").

To add one, open About, type in Add a note… and choose Add note. Line breaks are kept as paragraphs.

The item pane on the web lists existing notes but has no control for editing or removing one. From the command line, pangur note KEY "text" adds a note, and an assistant connected over MCP can add one with create_note.

Citing an item or copying its linkCopy Anchor Link

Cite this item opens a formatted citation. Choose a style under Citation style (APA is the default) and then Copy. If Pangur cannot format the item, it says that no citation could be generated. Styles, and exporting several references at once, are covered in Cite and export references.

More for this item › Copy link to this item copies the item's address in the library. Anyone you send the link to needs access to the project to open it. To give someone outside the project a reference, use a share instead.

CollectionsCopy Anchor Link

A collection groups items within a project. An item can belong to any number of collections, and taking it out of a collection does not remove it from the library. Collections can be nested to any depth.

Creating and arranging collectionsCopy Anchor Link

To create a collection, choose New collection at the top of the Collections sidebar and give it a name. To create one inside another, open the parent's Actions menu (the button beside its name) and choose New sub-collection. The same menu offers Rename, Move to… (which asks for the new parent, or Top level) and Export…, which exports the collection's references as a file in one of the formats described in Cite and export references.

Adding items to a collection and removing themCopy Anchor Link

There are several ways to put an item in a collection, and which one you use depends on where you are.

• Drag an item from the list onto a collection in the sidebar. If the item you drag is one of several ticked items, the whole selection goes, and Pangur confirms how many items it added.
• Right-click a row and choose Add to collection…, or choose it from the Collections: line on the item's About tab.
• Tick several items and use Add to… › A collection in the bulk bar (see Acting on several items at once). New collection… in that menu creates a collection and adds the items in one step.
• Choose Add an item (+) while you are viewing a collection. The dialog files the new item in that collection unless you choose another one, or none.

To take an item out of a collection, choose Remove from followed by the collection's name on the item's Collections: line. While you are viewing the collection you can also use Remove from this collection in the row's menu or in the bulk bar.

Deleting a collectionCopy Anchor Link

Actions › Delete asks you to confirm and reminds you that the items stay in your library. Deleting a collection removes the collection and its place in the tree, and nothing more: the items in it remain in the library and in any other collections they belong to.

Acting on several items at onceCopy Anchor Link

Tick the box beside each item you want. You can also click rows with ⌘ held (Ctrl on Windows and Linux) to add them one at a time, or with Shift held to select a range. A bar appears showing how many are selected, with these actions:

Clear selection unticks everything.

Copying items to another projectCopy Anchor Link

Copy to project… in the bulk bar copies the selected items into another project that you can edit. The items in the current project are left as they are.

1. Tick the items, choose Copy to project… and then Choose a project….
2. Pick the destination. Pangur copies the items in the background and shows its progress as it copies the files.
3. When it finishes, Pangur reports how many items it copied, how many were already in the destination, and any that had problems.

The copy takes each item's details and tags, its attachments and stored files, its notes and its highlights. It does not take collections or the item's relations to other items, and photographs, transcriptions, analysis, documents and Ask conversations all stay in the original project.

Pangur does not duplicate an item that the destination already has. It matches by the item's key, its DOI or ISBN, or its title and creators, and reports such items as already there, so copying the same items twice does no harm.

You can copy up to 200 items at a time, and you need to be able to read the project you copy from and to edit the one you copy into. Copying is also available on iPhone and iPad, from Copy to project… in an item's menu.

Deleting an itemCopy Anchor Link

To delete one item, open it and choose More for this item › Delete…, or right-click its row and choose Delete. To delete several, tick them and choose More actions › Delete in the bulk bar. Pangur shows its progress and reports how many it moved and any it could not.

A deleted item goes into the project's trash with its notes and attachments, and stays there for 30 days. Until then you can undo the deletion from the message that appears, or restore the item from Trash in the library's sidebar (The trash). When the item is deleted for good, any imported TEI edition of it goes too, and its stored files stop counting towards your storage.

Assistants connected over MCP cannot delete or edit items. They can add to your library, but they cannot remove or overwrite anything in it (Assistants and Pangur). In an organisation's project (a feature that is not offered on every account), members with the viewer role cannot edit or delete items either.