My occupation requires that I constantly review resources (journal articles, book chapters, sometimes web sites), create some meaningful personal account of these sources, and then store these accounts in a form that will be useful to me later. Sometimes later is next week when I attempt to integrate the results of a literature review in writing the Introduction to an article and sometimes later means 30 years later when I am attempting to locate an article I think I read in graduate school because that article may address an issue my younger colleagues now think is original. I have experimented with this challenge throughout my career – note cards, copies of xeroxed and highlighted articles stored in file cabinets, free form storage and search systems built in Hypercard, online social bookmarking systems, etc. I admit at this point that I spend far more time experimenting with such systems than I spend applying any given system to actual work. Total time expenditure considered, I would probably still be better off with a box of index cards and my file cabinets full of journal articles. However, I keep telling myself someone has to experiment to offer suggestions to others.
Recently, I have been exploring a free open source product called Zotero. Zotero is a Firefox extension developed at George Mason University. Zotero can function like social bookmarking sites that store a “snapshot” of a web site (something like FURL). Zotero can also save citations and notes for old school resources (articles, chapters and books). When possible, I now store the pdfs for the journal articles I read and annotate (see previous post describing YEP). Within Zotero, I can attach the files stored within YEP to Zotero citations. Zotero allows collections of citations to be created (perhaps temporarily) and then exported as a reference list (see image below).
The screen capture appearing below offers a glimpse of Zotero – this three pane system can be opened at the bottom of your browser window when needed.
I worry a bit about the complexity of this system. If I invest heavily in using it for real work, I am also going to have to consider carefully how I will backup the material I create. This is not one of those systems that stores resources on a remote server maintained by folks who back up religiously. This is a tool I would have to understand better and take responsibility for the maintenance issues.
The folks at Zotero have big plans for the future and intend to move their product from an interesting browser plugin to something with greater power. I am not ready to commit to this resource to the exclusion of others I use, but I would feel comfortable using this tool as I work on a future project. If you use Firefox, take a look and see what you think.
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