I heart Zotero!

I have been trying out some of the plug ins that work with the new Friefox 3 browser, and so far the clear winner by a wide margin is called "Zotero."

As their website says, "Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself."

And they are oh, so right. Ok, so here's how I've used it. I downloaded the plugin (after downloading the new browser). Whenever I find a webpage that Ztero thinks is an artcile, it shows a little book icon in my search bar. I click on the icon, and poof! The web adress plus any citation info is saved. If I want to access the info, I just click on the Zotero box at the lower right hand corner of my browser, and I can see all my saved pages/articles. If it isn't an article, Zotero takes a "photo" of thepage I want and saves it. Then, I can organize all my pages into collections (like bookmarks).

But the fun doesn't stop there! I can create a bibliography/workscited by selecting whatever I want, right clicking, and choosing the citation style: Here's an example:

Copland, M. A. (2003). Leadership of Inquiry: Building and Sustaining Capacity for School Improvement. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25(4), 375-395.

Delfino, C. S. (1998). From the Secondary Section: "But I'm Not a Reading Teacher": The Lament of the Middle and High School Teacher. The English Journal, 88(2), 17-19.

Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P. T. (2005). How College Affects Students: A Third Decade of Research (1st ed., p. 848). Jossey-Bass.

I can also take notes on something I am reading and Zotero will save those notes! I haven't used that feature yet, but as soon as I do, I'll write about it here.

Anyway, download it now! Now!!!