Zotero is now available to the public. For those who haven’t been following the release, Zotero is free software designed that allows you to collect, manage, and site your references. A couple of things to note before you rush over and download this program. First it is still in Beta which means it has some rough edges, but honestly I have been using it for about a month now and I can say my own personal experience has been great. I tried to get it to crash several times on my Mac an couldn’t, it is, in my experience very stable. The only stability issues I had were when using it on a flashdrive. Second, it is actually a plugin for Firefox, which means that it runs out of your browser as opposed to being its own application like say endnotes or sente. This has many advantages, but means that you will need to download Firefox 2.0 to be able to use Zotero (firefox is also free).
My own personal experience with Zotero is that it has the potential to substantially change the way academics (from undergrads to professors) track and maintain citations, as it is designed to manage information both from the web and in print. It is remarkably easy to use, and beats the functionality of the paid citation managers. It isn’t a whole database notation/information manager like Tinderbox or Devon, but for most people will do the trick. In fact, I am considering scrapping using Bookends and just using Zotero. And as I mentioned above the biggest bonus is that it is free, this means it will be available for all students.
Dave, please keep us posted on your experience with Zotero. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m going to. Right now I use Bookends for my citations as well (you don’t think you’ll need it for integration with Mellel?)
I’ve hesitated to make the switch to Firefox, but I’ll give it a shot. Incidentally, another good topic might be what extensions you’re using for Firefox.
Keep up the good work…
Excellent. I will give this software a go and I think you may be right, this is a kind of software that we all need. One which is free and manages all citations, and also picks them up automatically from web. This will revolutionize the way academics work. I have just started working on a systematic review and was planning on switching to bookends from endnote. Now I will give zotero a try – atleast it is free!
One thing I really like in the trial version of bookends, I am using, is that it automatically renames pdf’s for you which I can then add to devonthink. How will I be able to do that once I start working in zotero? Any ideas.
Actually I don’t use Firefox most of the time, my browser of choice is OmniWeb as I like the ability to manipulate style preferences for each page, as well as the tabs on the side. But most importantly I need a browser that is built on Webkit not Gecko to work with Devon. But Zotero might be a better option than Bookends or Sente which would make Firefox useful for me, even if just for managing citations. Ultimately though part of my thinking is the importance of learning to use this software to help students with information literacy.
I use Tinderbox and wonder how Devon compares with it. Could you tell us what you think the differences and similarities are between the two?
Charles,
I am not a Tinderbox expert, I looked at it briefly but wasn’t sold. You can try reading this line from the Devon forum: http://www.devon-technologies.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1927&highlight=tinderbox
Which contains a discussion, but my basic impression is that Tinderbox is a better authoring enviornment (not surprising given its hypertext lineage) and has more visual output, it makes outlines better, shows you viusually the connections. Devon Think is much better at being the place to store everything. I do very littel typing in Devon Think (I use Omni for outlining) and I don’t need the visual presentation, what I do need is the ability to deal with a wide range of text types easily and the power of Devon’s AI. Hope this helps.
[...] It begins with the ability to share bookmarks in Social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is part of the fiber of Web 2.0. Sites such as Delicious, Diigo, Furl, Spurl, Citulike, Stumbledupon, and Zotero, a program that Academic Hack likes which will soon add sharing abilities. The list goes on and on. The viral videoWeb 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us by Matt Wesch captures this spirit, even as it promotes a fairly optimistic vision (he has since started a blog to handle feedback on the piece). It is clear from his video of screen captures, that Wesch sees the social bookmarking as fundamental to our role as the refashioners of the web. Jill Walker has seen past some of the visual effects to demand that the piece stay truer to its title. Bookmarking systems themselves seem to be reproducing at viral rates. For an excellent, though already dated review of systems, see: Tony Hammond, Timo Hannay, Ben Lund, and Joanna Scott wrote an excellent article in D-Lib on Social Bookmarking Tools. Richard McManus offers another comparison. It is a sign of the moment that already some of the sites have folded and armies of clones have emerged to take their place. As one programmer put it to me lately, these features were always a possibility on the web, but now they have been systematized and the rate of development of new systems for social annotation has accelerated beyond imagining. [...]