Another use of Zotero

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Dear Non-Library Nerds,

You can stop reading now.

Signed,

This Girl

I started using Zotero to manage my documents for class.  Although this bibliographic tool (it stores documents, allows you to add notes and tags, inserts citations into your Word document, and then builds a bibliography based upon the documents you use–all built seamlessly within the Firefox browser) is geared more toward the end-product of a research paper, I was thinking that it might be beneficial for class.  I spend a good portion of my time finding, printing, and then sorting through journal articles.  This semester I thought perhaps I’d try to read them from my computer screen (omystars I’m becoming a less tactile person?!  2.0!) and keep my comments in a Word document.  It still seemed a bit messy to me–too many steps, too many folders to create and sort through. Although there is probably a way the Word or Pages allows you to hyperlink remote files I was feeling too stubborn to find out.

So I turned to Zotero, who would allow me to “capture” the article, add notes, and retrieve articles by class date or keyword.  Brilliant.  I’ll just have to be sure to stay off Adium (or GoogleChat) and on task during class…

The only downside is that this is all hosted from within my Mac.  Meaning, if I’m away from my computer I’ll have to be sure to capture the articles and notes later.  Internet hosting verses isolated desktop hosting–an interesting conundrum that I’ve experienced both sides of recently.  But the RefWorks v. Zotero discussion is a topic for another day.

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Filed under 2.0, grad school, library