Zotero Again!

Last Friday, I discovered Zotero and I posted it here because I was so excited about it... as I have been exploring it and researching some more, I am even more convinced it is a tool we need to introduce to our students.

Basically, this is a Firefox plug-in that allows you to build references as you surf or as you conduct online research (I am talking about using full-text databases not Wikipedia).

If I am using Firefox and I find a book on Amazon that I want to add to my bibliographic database, I can click the icon in my address bar. If I have a book in my hands, I can enter the ISBN and have it added to my bibliographic database. If I am on a full-text database and I find a reference with an DOI (digital object identifier), I can copy and paste it and it will be added to my bibliographic database.

Once I am ready to add a resource to my reference section of my paper, I can drag it from my web browser into my word processor. I little reformatting (e.g adding italics to to title in my word processor) and the references are complete.

I am a researcher, I take referencing seriously, and I think we need to be sure we are teaching good researching skills to everyone today as it is becoming more important in the information-overloaded world of the 21st century.

This video comes from Zotero's site:
http://www.zotero.org/static/videos/zotero_1_5_cast.flv