With the new version 2.0, Zotero is definitely making itself known as the best reference software on the market. Actually, this sounds a bit like an oxymoron as Zotero hasn’t got much to do with “the market”: it is in fact free! Zotero is an advanced bibliographic software produced by the Centre for History and New Media of George Mason University. It is a Free Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS), that is, its code is available to anyone who wants to contribute and propose upgrading. It is distributed as plug-in for the Mozilla’s (Floss) browser Firefox, and enables users not just to collect all sort of reference materials with only one click, but also to add personal notes, highlight sentences, create linked tags, organize the collections in many different ways, and of course to produce very effective and precise bibliographies with just one click. For an overview on Zotero’s functionalities, see these videos and tutorials.
Despite Zotero being a free and extremely powerful software, there seems to be no interest in our college (Goldsmiths, University of London) to implement it, or to make it easy to use to students and staff. While the Library staff is busy at providing training for a poorly equipped web version of the proprietary software End-Note (distributed by the well-known Thomson Scientific), students complain that there are not enough places available for these sessions. So, it appears legitimate to ask why it is not possible to spread the word and start thinking seriously of replacing the mainstream software with Zotero, creating more training hours and places from savings made on the software. Moreover, while Zotero is multi-platform, the full version of EndNote only works with Windows and Mac (no possibility to integrate the library software on Open Office either). Last but not least, EndNote does not have multi-user capabilities, which has in fact become another powerful feature of Zotero (basically you can create a group and edit the same bibliography on that co-operative project).
You might then want to ask around why the Library staff can’t provide training on ZOTERO. They instead provide training on a miserable web version of EndNote, the software produced by the powerful multinational Thomson Reuters, paradoxically preparing future customers for them: in fact, you are expected to leave your software license behind you when you leave college after graduation, but you will NOT want to leave all your research references and notes as well! Finally, you might want to look at this page (pdf download) in which ten useful reasons for adopting Zotero are highlighted.
It is also very relevant, I think, to look into the lawsuit that Thomson moved to George Mason Uni, on the blog of the co-director of the Zotero project, Sean Takats, Assistant Professor at the above Centre. In 2008 Thomson Reuters sued George Mason University for providing reverse-engineered software, that is , for having given users the ability to move between reference software, which to my understanding means that they were terribly sucked by the fact that Zotero is able to provide (and encourages to do so) an import function for people who want to migrate from EndNote. The allegations were dismissed in June 2009 (full lawsuit is widely available on the web: http://www.citmedialaw.org): Thomson Reuters v. George Mason University! We live in a ‘free’ market after all, don’t we?
My vision for the future of study is a campus free from proprietary software: this is possible and Linux Ubuntu generates network solutions for education (and police forces, too) already. My vision of university study for the future is precisely this one: to have the courage to kick out all the multinationals of knowledge (Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Thomson, etc) and start doing the work of innovation expected from certain Universities and Centres, that is, to develop, implement, and promote Free (Libre) and Open Source Software. I would love to see, for instance, Goldsmiths in this list, very soon.
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