Zotero and RefWorks - It Doesn’t Have To Be Either/or

Zotero (www.zotero.org) is a free, open source bibliographic management software that our students could use even after they leave UNL. It was made by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Karin will explain Zotero, show its uses and also discuss how Zotero is similar and different from RefWorks.

Description: Zotero (www.zotero.org) is a free, open source bibliographic management software, made by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. I will explain Zotero and show its uses, and also discuss how Zotero is similar and different from RefWorks.

Introduction: What is Zotero?

“o hai i made you a paper… but i eated it”

Zotero is a free, open source citation and research materials manager, developed by the Center for History and New Media at the George Mason University. With Zotero, you can not only store citations, but the contents of electronic resources or resources you have scanned in yourself. You can also highlight and annotate the resources. One of the advantages of Zotero is the ability to store sometimes transitory web materials.

Quick Screenshot Overview:

  • (Screenshot of Zotero without Annotation)
  • Viewing window
  • Library
  • Tags
  • Citation and files
  • File information
  • Zotero Button

Zotero and RefWorks

So what is similar and different between Zotero and Refworks?

Automatic citation detection

Screenshot: Zotero detecting a file, RefWorks pings in library resources

Both RefWorks and Zotero will automatically “see” situation information on a number of sites. Refworks works with almost all UNL resources, but not not as many online resources. Zotero doesn’t work with all UNL resources, but works with other online resources.

Screenshot: Places RefWorks and Zotero saving can be found in Worldcat

Access

“My citashuns, let me show you them”

Zotero and RefWorks differ in how they store and display files.

Table: Zotero advantages and disadvantages

Zotero: All information is stored on your computer, and the program is run locally.

Zotero/Advantages: Since the materials live on your computer, you can access them even when you are offline.

Zotero/disadvantages: Since the files live on your computer, you can’t just move from computer to computer across operating systems. However, it is possible to keep Zotero on a portable version of FireFox, so you can access your Zotero library from different operating systems (I’ll demo this later)

Table: RefWorks advantages and disadvantages

Refworks: All information is stored online, and can be reached from any computer with an Internet connection.

Refworks/Advantages: Completely online access means that you can get to your files on whatever computer you’re at. The online access also facilitates sharing.

Refworks/Disadvantages: You can’t access your files if the network is down. You have to log in to see your files depending on where you are.

Integration with Word processing software.

“wurd”

Both Refworks and Zotero will integrate with Word, Zotero will also integrate with Open Office, making it Linux compatible.

Screenshot: Zotero open office integration

Screenshot: RefWorks Word Integration

Citation Styles

“i can haz apa?”

Table: RefWorks and Zotero citation formatting

RefWorks: Over 800 styles predefined, you can also make your own.

Zotero: 10 styles, maintained by an open source community. Interested parties can work on or alter their own citation styles, and offer them to be incorporated into Zotero.

  • American Medical Association
  • American Political Science Association
  • American Psychological association
  • American Sociological association
  • Chicago Manual of Style (3 versions)
  • Harvard Reference format
  • IEEE
  • Modern Humanities Research Association
  • Modern Language Association
  • National Library of Medicine
  • Nature Journal

Import/Export

Table: Zotero and RefWorks importing capabilities

Zotero import:

  • MODS
  • BibTeX
  • EndNote
  • MARC
  • RDF
  • RIS

Refworks import:

  • Over 120 formats, including those Zotero handles

Table: Zotero and RefWorks exporting capabilities

Zotero Export:

  • Zotero RDF
  • MODS
  • BibTeX
  • Endnote
  • RIS
  • Unqualified Dublin Core RDF
  • Wikipedia citation template

Refworks export:

  • Bibliographic Software (EndNote,Reference Manager,ProCite)
  • BibTeX - RefWorks ID
  • Citation List
  • RefWorks Tagged Format
  • RefWorks XML Format
  • Tab Delimited
  • XML (deprecated)

Other features

Refworks and Zotero can both build a bibliography for you at the touch of a button. Both have management features like folders, etc.

What Zotero can’t do

“care to share ur citashuns?”

The big feature of Refworks that Zotero can’t do is sharing. Refworks makes it possible to share citations (especially within the university) easily. Zotero promises this feature in the future, but it is not there yet. (I’ll talk a little about the proposed sharing features at the end)

As far as I know, it’s not possible to integrate Zotero with Blackboard, other than copying and pasting information.

Refworks has a nice feature to find duplicate items.

What RefWorks can’t do

“I’m in ur computr storin’ ur filz”

The major feature that Refworks is missing is the ability to store materials. Zotero can store HTML snapshots, pdf’s, and images. All text (including PDF’s) is searchable. Users can add tags to materials, or add notes. HTML material can be highlighted and notes can be added. There are even a few interesting features like a timeline view of your materials.

Screenshot: Timeline view

Why might you recommend one product over the other?

You might recommend Zotero if:

  • A student is leaving college soon and wants to take their citations with them without paying $100/year for RefWorks. Their citations can be exported from RefWorks and re-imported into Zotero.
  • A student or professor wants a way to store and manage electronic resources beyond just downloading or email to themselves, or they want to annotate electronically.
  • A student or professor wants everything stored on their computer, not online.
  • Someone is using web sources heavily for research and needs a way to save reliable backups of these files. (Blogs, wikis, etc.)

You might recommend RefWorks if:

  • Someone just wants an easy way to store and format citations, and doesn’t care about storing files or annotating.
  • A teacher wants to share a bibliography with a class.
  • Someone needs a solution that works on lots of different computers, both mac and PC, without a lot of downloading, installing, and configuring.

What other colleges are doing

Lots of other schools support both RefWorks and Zotero. (and Endnote, for that matter.)

A few examples of schools that support both Zotero and RefWorks:

University of Michigan

This school lists many citation management options, including Zotero, on their Library Guides and tutorials page

http://www.lib.umich.edu/guides/displayDocumentsFromDescriptor.php?desID=101&displayAll=1

http://www.lib.umich.edu/knc/howto/citation/available.html

Florida State

Prominently displays refworks information but there are also links to Firefox: campus edition and Zotero.

http://www.lib.fsu.edu/help/citing/tools

http://www.lib.fsu.edu/help/tools#firefox

Ebling Library at the University of Wisconsin

Ebling Library has a very nice page located under Reference Help > Citation Management (their navigation is really nice!)

This page gives links to tutorials and demos of Refworks, Endnote, and Zotero

http://ebling.library.wisc.edu/portals/reference_tools/citation_styles.cfm

MIT libraries

The MIT libraries have a couple of nice charts to help their users decide on a citation management software.

http://libraries.mit.edu/help/bibliography/index.html

http://libraries.mit.edu/help/bibliography/comparison.html

A note about navigation

It is interesting to see how these different schools place citation management programs in their navigation.

Zotero’s new sharing feature

Recently, there has been discussion on Zotero’s new sharing feature. They have partnered up with Internet Archive, and will give scholars to store materials that are not copyrighted so everyone can see them. There will also be the possibility to password protect certain materials, and to get a permanent URL for web materials.

http://www.dancohen.org/2007/12/12/zotero-and-the-internet-archive-join-forces/

For more information

You can also find a nice chart detailing the difference between citation management programs on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software

Karin’s items tagged “zotero” at del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/karindalziel/zotero

Conclusion

Zotero is a powerful citation management that is getting more powerful all the time. Even if Zotero is not officially supported at UNL, it’s worth knowing about in case a student wants to use it.

“Plagiarism: Ur doin it rong”

Demonstration of Zotero on Portable Firefox with Open Office integration.

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