A few thoughts on citation management - Part 2 - Zotero

Zotero is a Firefox plugin for citation management.

It's main strength is its ability to extract citation information. I was able to extract it for EBSCOhost articles and web pages that had RDF information. It can't capture citation information most web pages or PDF files, but you can manually "Create a New Item from Current Page." When you create an item, it has fill-in templates for a variety of resource types: book, blog, article, email, etc. Tagging is also possible, but it isn't as obvious as Connotea. For tagging, you need to remember to open the Zotero bar at the bottom of the screen and click on the Tag tab on the right side. You can also create multiple collections. Zotero also has OpenURL support.

Zotero has a few weaknesses. For starters, it works only with Firefox. Also, it stores files locally. Moving it between machines is complicated. You can: 1. run Zotero through the Portable Firefox application, 2. run Zotero from a network drive, 3. use a folder synchronization service, or 4. backup Zotero to a portable drive and overlay onto the Zotero files on another machine. Yikes!