Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself.
This extension is free, but it does require that you use Firefox. I've just begun using it and it is much improved over earlier versions. The last time I checked this website was about 6 months ago and at that time this resource was interesting, but not for power-users. Now it works smoothly, and lets you export your references in a format that can be easily read by Bookends, EndNote and other programs. It also has a very nice integration with Google Docs.
5 comments:
This is really user friendly. Not intimidating to use. Thanks!
Kristina: Yes, and the big thing (for me) is that it seems to "play well" with Gleeson Library searches. From my short tests it's very easy go bring in a citation from Gleeson. (It actually brings in too much info, but it's easy to cut out the extra stuff.) So this could become a marvelous 1-2 punch if combined with any Gleeson search a person conducts.
You're right that it plays well with Gleeson and in fact other sources. Importing from EndNote was a breeze. The next step is to familiarize myself with storing articles and using Zotero's other features. I know that I can store PDFs in Zotero, but I haven't been able to figure out how to use Zotero's note taking, tags, etc. with PDFs. I think this would be especially advantageous to learn, and learn well, since majority of sources come in PDF form.
WOW - Zotero looks smooth and complete! But why would you use Bookends too?
Dionne: I think of Zotero as a nice place to store references temporarily. Later I'd get all that stuff into Bookends.
Bookends is really a database program that allows me to create "smart groups," different bibliographies very quickly, have each citation linked to a PDF version of the article, and more. Plus, of course, I don't need to be connected to the internet.
However, ALL students should have an organized collection of articles they have read and might use again. Zotero is a great place to begin. If that's all you need, then fine. But you won't really know for sure until you've used Zotero, run into things you can't do, and then want a better solution. And, of course, you may not run into any limitations for your needs. It's hard to tell at this point.
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