Zotero: The next-generation research tool

Zotero is a free, open source extension for Firefox that enables users to collect, manage and cite research from all types of sources from the Firefox browser.  Zotero is available at http://www.zotero.org/ 

On websites that show search results such as those from library catalogues or electronic databases, Zotero, with the click of a mouse, finds and saves the full reference information for each citation to a local file.  If the source is an online article or web page, Zotero can optionally store a full text local copy of the source.  Users can also add notes, tags, and their own metadata through the in-browser interface.  Selections of the local reference library data can later be exported as formatted bibliographies.

Zotero is produced by the Centre for History and New Media of George Mason University and is currently available in public beta.

Firefox add-on: add EndNote Spark to your web browser

Most of us are aware of Firefox as a popular alternative, standards-compliant Web browser.  Firefox is also open-source.  A direct advantage to using this open-source browser is that there is an active community of developers who are constantly offering improvements.  Instead of making us wait for a new version of the browser, Firefox uses “Add-ons” to promote constant innovation.There is a very useful Firefox extension to Endnote that allows you to seamlessly download a webpage citation from the Internet (Firefox Brower) to Endnote. To add the Endnote Add-on to Firefox:

• In Firefox, go to Tools/Add-ons

• In a new window click on Get Extensions

• In the Search box of the Firefox Add-ons web-page type Endnote and download Endnote Add-on.

• Once you’ve installed it in FireFox, search the Internet, open web-page of your interest, go to Tools/Endnote, select Endnote Current Browser Text Export, then follow the prompts to download seamlessly the citation (or entire text) for the web-cite into Endnote software.

If you are using a computer that does not have Endnote software installed on it, follow the same pathway and save the citation to e.g. your USB. To import the citation/citations you have saved into Endnote:

• Open Endnote/File/Import

• For the Import Data File select the file you have saved, and for Import Option select Reference Manager (RIS)

• Click Import.

The citation will appear in your Endnote Library.