I’ve talked about Zotero in another post on Bookmarks, and why this one add-on or plug-in alone has forced me to migrate from Internet Explorer to Firefox, since it is not available on Explorer. It deserves its own post. I believe Zotero is the most useful plug-in on personal computers, for anyone who is an avid reader and especially for researchers. Here’s why.
As a simple bookmark plug-in, it has no peers. Here’s the functionality:
- Remotely backs up and syncs your library. Other bookmark systems do this is as well, but most hog memory. The benefits of remote backup are mainly two; safeguarding computer crashes and allowing access to bookmarks from any remote computer.
- Store PDFs, images, and web pages. Have you ever bookmarked a page that disappears? Have you ever wished you had a copy of the web page? Don’t worry about it any longer. And here’s a nifty little add-on as well; it’s called PDF Download. It not only helps you manage PDF documents, it will convert web pages into PDF’s for storage and later access. Which of course Zotero does with aplomb.
- Take rich-text notes in any language. Did you ever want to add a few notes to your bookmarks, so that you didn’t lose your train of thought? I did.
- Wide variety of import/export options. Just to ensure your data is more accessible. My advice is to stay away from any repository of information, including a blog or a database, that can not be downloaded or converted to other formats. Who knows what you might want to do with your data someday? Don’t be trapped.
- Free, open source, and extensible. Enough said.
- Collaborate with group libraries. If you’re interested in collaboration, you’ve got it. You can share your bookmarks with specific people, or everyone. You can track other people’s bookmarks, if they allow it.
- Organize with collections and tags. Organize your bookmarks in any manner you wish. The interface is awesome.
- Access your library from anywhere. As mentioned before, since it automatically performs remote backups, you can access them anywhere.
- Automatically grab metadata for PDFs.
- Instantly search your PDFs and notes. The text in your notes, and PDFs is automatically indexed and searchable. Ultimately this capability becomes a part of a killer application. Have you ever lost a bookmark and can’t even find the tag? Thought so.
- Advanced search and data mining tools. This capability is the umbrella under which all the other capabilities mesh. Think library, rather than bookmarks.
- Interface available in over 30 languages.
For any serious reader, Zotero is a godsend. It’s a natural corollary to RSS readers. Did I mention that it can work in concert with RSS readers? Just get this Better GReader add-on. Don’t you love emergence?
For the researcher or writer though, there is more functionality:
- One click capture. Zotero captures the metadata or bibliography (Title, author, publication, copyright, etc.) on an article or book in one click on thousands of websites. Or you can manually enter the information yourself.
- Cite from within Word and OpenOffice. Did you ever wish you had your library on-line so you could cite from it as you write? I did. Or you can drag and drop citations into any software, including blogs, that you can type.
- Use thousands of bibliographic styles. Did you ever wish you could change from one bibliographic style to another, depending on usage? I did.
- Remote access to online libraries. If you are a registered member to professional journals or university libraries, most of them allow online viewing to many of their resources. Zotero will allow you to enter their resolver and your password, so you can access them from home. And of course it will add the citation for you as well. Or would you rather go to the library?
Watch this short video:
What do you want for nothing? Zotero is one of the most beautifully written, useful, non-intrusive, software modules available on the Internet. I can’t imagine being on the Internet without it. So as Gandalf said, “Run you fools.” Run get Zotero.
