I stumbled upon the reference management software Zotero, and it is fabulous so far. I feel like blogging about it.
It’s a Firefox plugin that allows you to capture not only bibliographical information from Amazon, but also web pages, blog posts, etc… and store them in a subject hierarchy. And export them for bibliographes later. And take snapshots of web pages. And add notes.
Here’s why it works well:
- Entries can be several places in the subject hierarchy. Let’s face it, the hierarchical bookmark structure of current browsers is completely broken since 1/3 of all entries belong several places in the hierarchy (i.e. video game theory/players and video game design / playtesting). (I actually wrote my own program for this a few years ago, but it was nowhere near the usefulness of Zotero.)
- It is integrated into your browser where you do your work anyway.
- It takes snapshots of web pages, so you can reference them even when they’re gone.
- Notes, web pages, books, etc. are treated on the same level.
- It understands that research work is managing and navigating resources. (As opposed to something like EndNote that seems to assume that the core of research is writing bibliographies in MLA or Chicago style.)
What is missing?
- So far, the main lack is that video games are not included as a reference type. (It could even have integration with MobyGames.)
- Mass import of existing Firefox bookmarks.
