One-stop Shopping for Bibliographic Organization

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It “lives” in your Firefox browser as a 2.4MB add-on. You can easily capture bibliographic information from library catalogs, online journals, databases, Amazon, and web pages with one click of the mouse. You can also collect and store PDFs, images, screenshots, and links to websites, preserving them for later access.

Zotero Homepage

Zotero allows you to edit collected records to correct errors, or standardize bibliographic format. You store records in logical files, relate items directly to one another, or group them via tagging. Insert notes about how you found the source, create abstracts, or comment on the item’s usefulness to other research opportunities.

You can output data in many formats including bibliographies, html code, lists, reports, and more. Zotero integrates fully and directly into Windows or OpenOffice so that footnotes and bibliographies are pre-formatted to the desired citation style.

Your data is available to you both on and offline with up to 100MB free server space. Your personal account login allows you to access, add to, update and edit your information with online synchronization from different locations and equipment. Collaborate and share resources openly or privately with others with similar research interests.

Zotero is developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It is sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Andrew W. Mellon and Alfred P. Sloan foundations.

See John at the Dana Dawson Library circulation desk for help in setting up and personalizing your Zotero account. It took me 15 minutes to install Zotero and enable all of the features listed above. How long does it take you to type footnotes and a bibliography for a 10-page paper? Oh, and did I mention it was free?!

Explore posts in the same categories: Catalog, Databases, General Information, Information Discovery, Internet Resources, Knowledge Management, Search Tips, WorldCat

This entry was posted on January 7, 2011 at 10:46 am and is filed under Catalog, Databases, General Information, Information Discovery, Internet Resources, Knowledge Management, Search Tips, WorldCat. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.

One Comment on “One-stop Shopping for Bibliographic Organization”

So, you need to write an annotated bibliography… « Saint Paul Library Blog Says:

March 1, 2011 at 2:54 pm
[...] if you are using Zotero, record an annotation under the “Notes” tab. Notes will print along with other information when [...]

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