I am a big fan of Zotero, the uber-productive software tool that grabs, formats, and stores citations to items found in a multitude of locations: JSTOR, Amazon, Google Scholar or your online library catalog. This is a big time saver (never type complex citations again!). Zotero also takes a "snapshot" link to indicate where and when you retrieved a citation. This is helpful if you are scratching your head wondering "where did I find this book or article?" By clicking on the "snapshot" link attached to each citation, it takes you to where you originally found the item.You can also use a Zotero plug-in for Microsoft Word or Open Office. This plug-in enables you to insert citations either in the text or in footnotes. Simply click which sources you want added and it inserts them for you! For a screencast of the plug-in, click here.
Until now, Zotero only worked as a Firefox add-on. If you are like me, you may have gravitated away from Firefox to Google Chrome. Some of you also use Safari. Good news! Zotero is now available as a stable standalone. Open Zotero standalone and Google Chrome (or Safari) to grab citations from within Chrome.This is also ideal for those (like me) who use both Firefox and Chrome.
Go to http://www.zotero.org/download/ and download.
If you haven't used Zotero, check out this screencast (older version but still accurate description except now you can use other browsers). Double click to open full screen in Youtube.
Many students really love Zotero so encourage them to give it a try.
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