I have now come close several times to using Zotero to organize my research, but I never have the time to really commit to it. After reading McLemee’s article in today’s Inside Higher Education I may take another stab at it.
Does anyone use Zotero? I would love to get some testimonials.
Yes. It's a miracle provided you're willing to put the time in on it. The big issue is whether or not you're fully committed to staying on firefox for the long haul, since there's no easy way to transfer your data to other browsers.
I like Zotero. I used Endnote for my dissertation but was more than ready to dump it when Zotero first appeared. Since you can create entries quickly from library searches, amazon, etc., it really doesn't take much time to get it up and running. It can also be used for keeping your journal pdfs organized.
However, I don't use it for reading notes, or pdfs. They've improved its notetaking capabilities considerably on Zotero, but I still find it awkward. For that I use Microsoft's Onenote, though Evernote is worth considering for a free program.
John,
I've been experimenting with and using Zotero for about 6 months. Here's a productive post from my H&E blog (currently on hiatus) on the subject. Although I've been using Zotero to store my research, I haven't yet used it to produce an article. It may take you a while too, as you're unlikely to put information from old projects in the program; you'll probably use it for a new project.
Warning: I save/back-up Zotero on my thumb drive, but it takes up more space than I realized. You have to be careful about saving “photo” copies of things versus just links. Those .pdf type copies take up a lot of memory. I've now saved notes and info for 3 books in Zotero, and it seems particularly handy for that.
– TL