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I started using Zotero, an advanced referencing software, about two years ago, a bit as one of many other extensions to Firefox (Mozilla free and open-source web browser). At the time, I was also daily commuting into work, so my reading was often done on public transport (sic!), and my note-taking very patchy. But only recently, when I began assembling resources for my Literature Review, I realized how useful, easy to use, flexible, and powerful Zotero was, and how many references I managed to collect in the last year only! Seriously, its slogan is: “Research, not re-search”, and with good reasons, and I now think it is an essential tool of my daily work-flow, as I explain below.

Firstly, Zotero has been unusually built by practising researchers and teachers, at the Centre for History and New Media at George Mason University, Washington D.C. This means that its efficacy is absolutely massive, a combination of the traditional bibliographic functions (e.g. the ability to grab and edit in one click information already available throughout other on-line services and export it in a host of metadata: no need to re-typing fields at all!), and the most recent and intuitive interface (the developers unashamedly refer to iTunes style of drag and drop, collections building, tagging, etc). The latter function is often been compared to the resilient habit of many researchers of using index cards and making connections among them by way of spreading them on the table. With Zotero you can easily move in a three-layered database and build links between your resources (with tags and links if you wish), while at the same time having at hand all the notes you took for each specific resource.

Aside from this, and very importantly for the current state of research practices, another unique feature for Zotero is its location. Previous software require you move into other tools to do your research, making your work-flow fragmented into multiple, generally unrelated windows, such as a Word processor, a Web browser, a standalone citation tool like EndNote, and notes written in various digital or analogue forms. Zotero, instead, ‘lives’ in your browser (it is ‘only’ a Firefox plug-in, in fact), therefore, it is already where you are online. This also allows you to be with your referencing and note taking in real time while trawling the web.

I cannot stress enough how simple and useful Zotero is, and I am afraid that the more I write about, the more this might sound complicated and some people might be even put off from trying it. The best thing is then to start using it immediately, and there are plenty of useful tutorials and documentation on the Zotero website: (http://www.zotero.org/support/screencast_tutorials).

The other thing I want to briefly talk about is the underlying political issue around Zotero, which makes it even more appealing for me: a bit of Foucauldian digging, so to speak. Zotero is distributed under the Educational Community License, which is OSI-certified, and GPL-compatible. General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works, while the Open Source Initiative logo means that the Zotero code is open to further improvement, as well as being of course free to use.

This has got huge implications for Universities.

Let me give you a quick example. With your Goldsmiths username you receive (in the package of IT benefits) also a license to use EndNote Web, a miserable version of the EndNote software distributed by the powerful multinational of knowledge, Thomson Reuters (40^th in the latest ranking for Top Global Brands). While studying, then, you are able to collect your references and build your bibliographies for your college works for free, but then, at some point, you leave with your degree. What happens to your diligently collected notes and sources? Well, you have two choices: either you leave them behind, or you buy a licence from Thomson at the current price of $300 plus upgrades. In a way, you pay to rescue your work from the software company!

Now, apart from disputing the efficacy of the above software (compared with the latest Zotero version, which really makes a huge impact in many ways, e.g. by providing a pioneering collaborative functionality, and by being multi platform), there is the obvious consideration that our diligent library staff are providing free training for EndNote Web, and therefore, they are providing also future customers to Thomson Reuters! It seems to me that, as matter of fact, we are paying a fee to a powerful multinational three times: firstly, as training hours, which could be used to help students to learn a very intuitive and reliable free software; secondly, as future license fees to purchase the proprietary software; thirdly, and rather obviously, as cost in software for the college as a whole.

To make matters worse, and not surprisingly, the people behind EndNote have recently sued George Mason University (which, by the way also owns an EndNote license), seeking $10,000,000 (yes, 10 millions, where did they get this figure from is still a mystery!) for providing “reverse-engineered software”. That is, for having given users the ability to move between reference software, in our example, to export your own work from a college licensed software onto a different database. To my understanding, this means that they were terribly scared 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 sound to me a bit like saying that files created with Microsoft software would be opened just by the same original application. They were finally dismissed in June 2009, and full lawsuit is widely available on the web: (http://www.citmedialaw.org), for what somebody has poetically seen as Thomson Reuters v. Professors of History!

Finally, a curiosity: apparently, ‘Zotero’ is not an ancient Greek word, as I have always thought, but it comes from the Albanian verb zotëro-j, ‘master, acquire, learn fully’. The final -j marks the 1st person indicative (the regular citation form for Albanian verbs); in the imperative, we would get the bare verb root zotëro.

Whoever wants to know more about any of the issues I touched in this article, or wants an informal chat to share any technical matter relating to Zotero (e.g. synchronization, back-up, groups, compatibility), or to organize workshops, or even to promote a ‘Zotero Society’ (sic), can email me at p.cardullo@gold.ac.uk .

I decided to make public my Zotero Library collected so far, shared on Zotero website, where I also hold an account: here. By having a free account on Zotero, I can sync and backup my desktop/laptop Library database (pdf files are instead backed-up via Dropbox), join groups, and follow other people’s libraries. ((If interested you can even create a group whose library will work as a wiki, in which many users can modify and add entries))

Download my workshop handout, given at Sociology @ Goldsmiths in 2009, and spread the word.