Telstar

IRM2: Zotero – latest developments

Next session this morning is from Rintze Zelle – who has become part of the the Zotero community and has been part of the core team developing CSL 1.0

Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/) – free, open source, and has been developed as a Firefox extension. Rintze starting off with a demo of Zotero.

Zotero ‘translators’ – custom pieces of code that ‘scrape’ bibliographic details from specific webpages – e.g. PubMed Central – will create a Zotero record for the item, and include a link back to the original web page. Zotero can also capture pdfs at the same time where available. There are ‘translators’ available for a wide variety of journals and publisher platforms (and library catalogues) etc. Rintze also showing how translator for Google Scholar offers to download all items in a search result, or you can pick the ones you want to import to Zotero.

Zotero also allows you to add items by identifier – e.g. DOI, ISBN etc.; Also can extract metadata from pdfs if you import them into Zotero.

Zotero supports wide range of material types – books, articles, audio/video recordings (e.g. import data from Amazon page for DVD), blog posts, etc. etc.

Can import files – e.g. RIS files

Can organise your Zotero library – create folders, use tags

Can create a bibliography  – just select references from your Zotero library you can select references and drag them into a text editor – and it will paste styled references (your choice of styling) into the editor (if you keep the shift key pressed when you drag and drop, you will get in-text citation style instead). Zotero also has plugins for Word and Open Office.

Zotero somewhere between a full desktop client, and an online service. All references in your Zotero library are stored locally on your computer, but you can sync to an online store (for free). Can sync just references, or you can sync pdfs/full-text aswell – but limited to 100Mb (free). You can pay for more space, or use your own WebDav compliant storage.

Zotero supports ‘Groups’ online – you can join groups and share references with others, or collaborate on bibliographies/research etc. Groups have ‘online libraries’ where you can view all the references in the group library, and you can access an RSS feed from the library. However you cannot currently edit the references online – you have to do this via the Firefox extension.

Zotero forums are quite active, and good place to go for support.

Rintze now going to introduce some new features coming to Zotero.

Zotero Commons

This project started in 2007, but still in development. Zotero Commons is collaboration with Internet Archive. Takes sharing references much further than current ‘groups’. Zotero Commons will offer permanent storage for open materials at the Internet Archive – will assign permanetn, unique archive URLs. [looks like basically an alternative to current Open Archiving solutions?]

APIs

Already there is easy access to the Client API – easy way of extending the client. For example there is an add-on that plots locations from publications on to a map [I guess particularly good for conference papers]

There is a Web API, but is currently ‘read-only’, but read-write is coming.

Standalone Client

This will be a version of Zotero that is independent of Firefox – you don’t need to install and run Firefox. Will give better use of screen estate (e.g. on netbooks), and provide better integration with other browsers via APIs

Citation Style Language (CSL) 1.0

CSL is a free and open XML language to described citation styles. Zotero 2.0 and Mendeley both support CSL 0.8, and there are over a 1000 styles available.

CSL 1.0 allows for localization. E.g. to Punctuation, Dates and Terms – Rintze showing some differences between US and Dutch formats – e.g. used of ‘accessed’ vs ‘bezocht’ to show date an onlien version of resource was accessed.

Name Particles – e.g. the ‘van’ in Ludwig van Beethoven. Styles differ in how they handle these. CSL 1.0 allows for different practices. Rintze mentions example of a paper he submitted, he was told references not correctly sorted, because publisher handled these name fragments differently.

CSL 1.0 alls the use of rich-text in formatting – so allows for use of things such as sub- and super-scripts.

CSL 1.0 more mature than previous versions. Increasing support from other developers – and development of CSL processors. citeproc-js will be integrated into Zotero 2.1 release – so this will be first Zotero release to support new features.

Q & A

Couple of interesting questions to highlight:

Q: Why isn’t everyone using Zotero?

A: Still some problems – e.g. things solved by CSL 1.0 like rich-text in references. Wouldn’t necessarily recommend to non-technical users quite yet

Q: When will standalone client be available, because not allowed to use Firefox in NHS in UK

A: No date; small development team so new developments take time

Presentation online at http://www.slideshare.net/rintzezelle/zotero-innovations-in-reference-management