RebeccaWade_A5

I have repeatedly heard about various citation managers but I had never used one because I had never had a strong enough need to bother to learn how. Additionally, I am very much a creature of habit and I am quite attached to the way that I store articles and citations and such. That being said every new feature I found as I worked through the assignment, I felt like a kid in a candy store because I was so excited to see how easily it did all of its functions. I selected Zotero to work through this assignment. I started by downloading the Chrome extension because I was hoping to be able to use Zotero purely in a web browser and to avoid downloading it; again I'm quite change averse. However I did end up downloading the application to see how its functionality was different from the web version. Once I had the app downloaded I promptly forgot about the browser because I found the app so easy to use. I will note that the app is supposed to sync to the web browser but mine is not, I think because I elected not to sync Zotero across devices. I don't like syncing my devices because I use them for different purposes and like to keep them separated but I think this is why the sources in the app are not appearing in my browser.

Overall, I found Zotero so easy to use that it was genuinely fun to explore it and watch it do exactly what I needed. I am very glad that I started by getting the Chrome extension because it made it very easy to download citations and resources from databases, websites, and library catalogs. The benefit of the extension is that I didn't have to download and RIS file and it populated the record with the full article for all my journal articles. It was very cool to be able to click and open a PDF straight from Zotero. I was really impressed that I was able to drag and drop a file from my flash drive into Zotero and not only did it populate all the information but when I opened the PDF all the highlighting and notes that I had already made were still there. I did have to Google how to get files from my computer to Zotero but it was very easy to figure out. One thing I did notice was that in order for the app to provide the citation information, the document has to be a true PDF or other readable format. I had one PDF that contained scanned pages of a book. Zotero did store the document but was unable to populate the information fields. This is not a big issue but just something I noticed. Managing and organizing my sources was also very easy and intuitive. I was thoroughly impressed with the way that I was able to add notes to each source. Not only was I able to have multiple notes attached to it but I could actually format the content which was a big surprise. I can already picture how I would use this feature to leave notes to myself about the utility of sources so that I don't have to fully open the document or revisit the website to remember what I thought.

There are other features of Zotero which I did not have occasion to use but could se them being very useful. First, being able to work in the app offline would be great especially if you already have the PDFs downloaded then you can still work even if you have no internet. Second, sharing is a feature that Zotero offers which allows you to share your collections with others, them to share theirs with you, and a group to work collaboratively. This does require that you sync which I did not do but this does seem like a very useful feature for large research groups.

The trickiest part of working with Zotero was creating and editing citations and bibliographies. This took me the most time to figure out. I tried to use a recent paper with in-text citations to create a bibliography and it did not work. I don't think it liked that I had not used Zotero to make the citations which it was then building the bibliography from. The same happened with creating citations. I do see this being inconvenient for me because I usually throw citations in while I am writing and to have to take an extra step to build through Zotero may not be the most convenient. However, it does create citations and a bibliography in all the formats I usually use and I'm sure that I could find a way to work with this because it would save me time overall. The only other issue I had was that it does not automatically give you a chance to insert page numbers in the citations and it was fairly tricky for me to figure out how to do this manually. Obviously it can't populate a citation with the correct page number but I think if it gave you an automatic chance to add the page number when you create the citation in the paper this would make the process a bit easier with a better flow.

Overall, I really enjoyed learning how to use Zotero and can absolutely see myself using this in the future. Almost everything was intuitive and easy to figure out and the Chrome extension is probably my favorite feature. Based on my limited use of Zotero I would absolutely recommend it to others who are new to applications like this because of how functional and comprehensive it is in addressing the needs of the user.

I have neither given nor received aid while working on this assignment. I completed the graded portion before looking at anyone else's work. - Rebecca