Mark of Zotero* Two-click citations

Chris StrauberWofford College LibraryPresented via OPAL, 1/23/08

*with thanks to Scott McLemee and everyone else who used this pun first.

The Agenda

a reference librarian’s view of Zotero’s reality and potential

three short demonstration videos a list of sources to explore further plenty of time for questions

Right, Easy, Clear. Pick One.

Citation is hard to do, hard to explain A variety of software to manage

citations is availablecomputers are stupid but fastcitation rules are complex

Leading us to...

Just Fill Out This Simple Form

Just Fill Out This Simple Form #2

Just Fill Out This Simple Form # 3

Zotero: A Different Approach

Zoh-TAIR-oh a citation manager built into a web

browser a scholarly tool built by scholar/geeks

Center for History and New Media at George Mason University

Funded by IMLS and the Mellon Foundation

What It Does

captures and stores citation information from websites

creates references and bibliographies takes notes and saves snapshots does all of this inside the web browserVideo 1: Zotero Interface

note: citations chosen for entertainment value!

What It Does Differently

Zotero automates gathering citations

Video 2: Zotero Capture

What Zotero Recognizes

Complete list of sites Library catalogs

Innovative, Sirsi-Dynix, Ex Libris Book websites

Worldcat, Amazon Subscription databases

EBSCO, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, Wiley Interscience, etc.

What Zotero Recognizes #2

Research portals Pubmed, ERIC, arXiv.org, Google

Scholar, etc. Media websites

Economist, NY Times, The Age, etc. Other websites

YouTube, Flickr, CiteULike, Epicurious, others

Zotero Citation Styles

APA, MLA, and Chicago specialized styles for Nature, IEEE,

National Library of Medicine, and others

Not 100% perfect

other styles can be added by users Journal of Nano-Epidemiology

Zotero Bibliographies

Three short films about creating bibliographies

Video 3: Zotero Citations

Extra Features

Take notes in any language or alphabet

Visualize your references on a timeline

Use as an OpenURL resolver Easily import and export your data

Infelicities

Garbage In, Garbage Outcapitalization varies by database

Some confusion about multiple contributorsauthor? translator? editor?

Website recognition is a moving target

What Zotero Doesn’t Do

work in any browser but Firefox export in every possible citation style recognize every possible source replace a web-based system like

Refworks or Connotea

Yet.

Why Open-Source Matters

Anyone interested can contribute a style or a new website translatornote: this is how Refworks does it also

The software is independent of the current sponsors

Firefox’s open nature is what makes this project possible

Future Developments

online citation backup and sharingtesting to begin Spring 2008

sharing of scholarly documentsin assoc. with Internet Archive

an unusually well-funded project (Young 2007)

Summary

Zotero is a toolIt is one tool among manyIt is a relatively flexible tool

It has serious grant-funding and is developed by scholars

It translates PubMed abbreviations into complete journal titles

Sources: Works Cited

McLemee, Scott. “Mark of Zotero.” Inside Higher Ed.com. 18 Dec 2007 <http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/09/26/mclemee>.

Young, Jeffrey R. “New Effort Encourages Professors to Share the Research Materials on Their Hard Drives.” Chronicle of Higher Education. 18 Dec 2007 <http://chronicle.com/free/2007/12/968n.htm>.

Sources: More Details

“Frequently asked questions.” 4 Dec 2007 <http://www.zotero.org/documentation/frequently_asked_questions>.

Greenberg, Josh. “Compatible sites.” 5 Oct 2006. 8 Jan 2008 <http://www.zotero.org/translators/>.

“Screencast tutorials.” 8 Jan 2008 <http://www.zotero.org/documentation/screencast_tutorials>.

“Word processor integration.” 8 Jan 2008 <http://www.zotero.org/documentation/word_processor_integration>.

About Me

Chris Strauber

Reference & Web Services Librarian

Wofford College

Chair of LITA Open Source Systems Interest Group

cstrauber@gmail.com

Questions?

cstrauber+zotero@gmail.com