Sunday, January 18, 2009

Zotero

What is it?
  • 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. Also funded by George Mason University (source)

Why bother? (the value proposition)

  • I am finding the research tool invaluable for citing articles found on the web. For example, when I find an article I like, I can select a button to have citing information automatically included into one of my “libraries” (a folder than I author to put my citings in). It automatically inserts much of the information already for me (including the website URL, date of access stamp), and provides fields for manual entry of the rest.

    But it doesn’t end there. Here are some of other utilities built into it (similar to Endnote)

  • Take a snapshot of the article

    I can use the “attachments” utility to take a snapshot of the webpage or document (a picture file)

  • Add Annotations

    After that, I can add “annotations” to the snapshot

    • highlight key words / phrases in the webpage / document (these are saved for future reference)
    • add my own annotations over the snapshot of the webpage / document (these are saved for future reference)

    I’ve been using this annotation feature to summarize key sections of an article. These are saved “on / over” the actual paragraph in question. They can also be hidden with a click of a button. These summaries are in my own words and facilitate quick review of key sections of a text

  • Notes Utility

    I can use the “notes” utility to add my own notes about the webpage / document
    With a click of a button I can have a text box open for me to author a set of notes on the article. I can even copy and paste text or links into that same note. I can author more than one note on the same article. I might author different notes based on different subtopics that I want to use for my research. I’ve been using this note feature to complete summaries of articles & titling notes by my choice of subtopics.

  • Attachments utility

    I can go on to use the “attachments” utility to add attachments to the citing (in my case.. I’ve been adding links, pictures (screen shots of charts that are found in an article) the actual article to the citing

  • Tags Utility

    I can go on to use the “tags” utility to add tags to any one of the many items that have been produced in these libraries (i.e. my entries, notes, links, pictures, attachments, related files, etc.) . I can do searches using these tags to look for relations between articles in my library or libraries. I use this to realize correlations between articles and to realize “reflections” that are drawn from my reviews of the many articles, notes, links, annotations on a given subtopic - tagged as per subtopic.

    I can go on to

  • produce a “report” of a library. (I use this to share bibliographic and URL information with my online colleagues)
  • copy citings (and all of the attachments) to create new libraries from existing libraries

.. and I haven’t even gotten to

  • producing a bibliography in RTF or HTML
  • exporting libraries to other programs (i.e. Endnotes)
  • importing zotero libraries from other users
  • how it can be integrated with MS Word (with plugin - just like Endnotes) for automatic insertion of citing and bibliographies
  • how it supports over 30 languages (including Arabic, Chinese, & Russian)
How to set up Zotero
  • There's a comprehensive "support" section on the Zotero websitewhich includes the following headings
  • Getting started
  • The basics
  • FAQs
  • History & Compatibility
.. and a set of screencasts to "show" you how to use its various features.
  • built in support for 10 citing styles
  • additional plugins are available for 41 others including the Open University's Harvard Reference format(source)
Support resources

No comments: