At the beginning of the year Mike introduced us to Zotero and we have been best friends ever since. 'Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.' At the very moment when Mike unleashed the phenomenon that is Zotero to us it is fair to say a piece of me sank inside. I had just realised that when I was slaving away in final year history attempting to put together my dissertation bibliography and completing what seemed like a million footnotes I actually could have used Zotero to save me so many hours. For that moment I felt very sad with the knowledge that I was never going to get those hours of my life back but then my heart filled with joy when I realised I will not make the same mistake twice and so this year when doing citations and bibliography I shall have my friend Zotero to aid me.
Firstly Zotero works only in conjunction with Firefox. I firstly downloaded Firefox and then installed Zotero which now lives in my web browser. It allows me to collect such information as information on books as it recognises such sites as the UCC Library website. I can collect such information and then store it in my very own library. I thought this was very impressive. As I changed my thesis topic so many times Zotero proved very helpful in allowing me to gather new information on my new topic quickly. It allows one to organise the data one has saved by placing notes next to the items saved which is helpful when looking at items after a long time. The best part I am sure will be when I am putting together my final bibliography for my thesis, to know that this is only a click away makes me very happy! My library is ever growing thanks to Zotero, hopefully I will get round to reading all of the books stored in my library! Zotero I see as being a must have to every student I do not understand how I survived without it!
http://www.zotero.org/
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