Zotero Is Cool

Meet Zotero.  It is pronounced zoh-TAIR-oh.  And, for us office - lawyer - actually - research - something geeks who like to write way too much, this is cool stuff.  Best of all it is FREE!!!  It is easy to use.  (Did I say FREE).  It is a Firefox extension.  You use it to collect, manage and cite your research sources.  Best of all it lives on your web browser.  Zotero is based on an Albanian word that means “to acquire" or "to master.”  And, it does help you do that.  The only problem that some people might have with this research tool is that you cannot use it with Explorer.  Zotero can sense and grab citations in the browser because it can call on many different parts of Firefox’s code. Microsoft (and many other browsers) do not allow extension developers to call on more than a tiny fraction of their code.  Although Zotero is browser based you still must store everything on your computer in a subdirectory of your Firefox profile directory.  That takes up space on the one hand, but it does allow you to work offline.  You can manage your collection of cites with Zotero.  You can make notes on Zotero and even print them off if you are a paper-a-holic.  You can create a bibliography.  You can conduct searches within Zotero.  PC Magazine has voted Zotero one of its top picks for FREE software for 2007.  So download it.  Take it for a spin.