When people like Lorcan Dempsey and Peter Binkley suggest one pays attention to a service like Zotero, I'm gonna pay attention! It's in private beta right now, so I haven't actually tried it, but here's what it's all about. From thier homepage, Zotero:
- captures citation information
you want from a web page automatically, without typing or cutting and
pasting on your part, and saves this information directly into the
correct fields (e.g., author, title, etc.) of your Zotero library - lets you store—beyond citations—PDFs, files, images, links, and whole web pages
- allows you to easily take notes on the research materials you capture
- makes it easy to organize your research materials in multiple ways, such as folders, saved searches (smart folders), and tags
- offers fast, as-you-type search through your materials so that you can quickly find that source that you only vaguely remember
- lets you export formatted citations to your paper, article, book, or website
- has an easy-to-use, modern interface that simplifies all of your research tasks, with "where has that been?" features such as autosaving your notes as you type
- runs right in your web browser and is a platform for new forms of digital research that can be extended with other web tools and services
- is free and open source
Technorati Tags: Zotero, citation_manager, bibliographies
