Zotero to go
I’m looking for options to collect and curate references and resources for this upcoming PhD journey. I’ve made a commitment to read daily – something that is research related or research itself – to heighten my understanding and broaden my scope. As I read, there are connective references within the articles and chapters I read that I want to collect and be able to review, sort, build and categorize. I started with a Google Doc, setting a table of contents at the start and building links to categories within the document. It doesn’t allow me to tag or build inter-connections so it’s got limited usability once the collection grows in size.
Zotero to the rescue. I’m looking at the option of using Zotero as a standard location to drop in references and resources since the built in affordance of tags and notes makes it more useable for my own annotated bibliography. It appears to also have a plug-in for MS word documents but I’m not sure how that works. I’m not sold on it yet. I’ll have to learn more before ditching all my current curation options (maybe Diigo might make more sense). I’ve still got time to play around with these tools. I’ll talk to others who are doing research and maybe ask which tools they use for which purposes when collecting references for citation.
In the meantime, here are some Zotero related links to expand my understanding:
- Zotero Home
- Zotero Support
- Zotero Reference Management Software – video from Carleton University, basics
- Using Zotero for Academic Writing – video