Part 1:
I am an optimistic newbie to Zotero, the free Firefox add-on for saving and sharing research sources, creating bibliographies, and I don’t know what all else. Still a newbie because I installed it on my computer last year after completing my thesis, so I haven’t had much call to explore its capabilities. I did, however, appreciate the ease with which I was able to create a bibliography for a short presentation last summer. It gave me a sense of power over my usually scattered research. But with power comes responsibility.
Part 2:
I credit the amazing work of information technology folks for making the software-incompatibility issues that used to plague public computers pretty much go away. Remember the Mac versus IBM disk problems? Programmers, information architects, systems librarians—the people who really understand the theories at work “under the hood” of my computer—have made the different applications I like to use work together seamlessly . . . most of the time.
From early fall (when my NetId with the University of Tennessee expired) until this week, I was unable to access EBSCOHost databases, available through my public library, from my home computer. Every time I tried, Firefox automatically went to the UT proxy address (through which I also accessed EBSCOHost when I was a student). I cleared my history, my cookies, my cache. I wondered if perhaps it was an IP-address issue. I couldn’t figure out why my browser insisted on taking my back to UT, especially since I had no trouble accessing other databases provided by my public library.
Fortunately, a helpful systems librarian at Hodges Library (UT) figured it out. She asked if I had installed any browser add-ons, like Zotero! I saved what little I had stored on Zotero, uninstalled it, and now have access to EBSCOHost again. I also have reinstalled Zotero and look forward to using it with greater understanding. One place I’ve turned for understanding is Jason Puckett’s Librarian X Web site. He’s presented on Zotero and apparently currently is writing Zotero: A guide for librarians, teachers and researchers, planned to be released mid-year.
I am an optimistic newbie to Zotero, the free Firefox add-on for saving and sharing research sources, creating bibliographies, and I don’t know what all else. Still a newbie because I installed it on my computer last year after completing my thesis, so I haven’t had much call to explore its capabilities. I did, however, appreciate the ease with which I was able to create a bibliography for a short presentation last summer. It gave me a sense of power over my usually scattered research. But with power comes responsibility.
Part 2:
I credit the amazing work of information technology folks for making the software-incompatibility issues that used to plague public computers pretty much go away. Remember the Mac versus IBM disk problems? Programmers, information architects, systems librarians—the people who really understand the theories at work “under the hood” of my computer—have made the different applications I like to use work together seamlessly . . . most of the time.
From early fall (when my NetId with the University of Tennessee expired) until this week, I was unable to access EBSCOHost databases, available through my public library, from my home computer. Every time I tried, Firefox automatically went to the UT proxy address (through which I also accessed EBSCOHost when I was a student). I cleared my history, my cookies, my cache. I wondered if perhaps it was an IP-address issue. I couldn’t figure out why my browser insisted on taking my back to UT, especially since I had no trouble accessing other databases provided by my public library.
Fortunately, a helpful systems librarian at Hodges Library (UT) figured it out. She asked if I had installed any browser add-ons, like Zotero! I saved what little I had stored on Zotero, uninstalled it, and now have access to EBSCOHost again. I also have reinstalled Zotero and look forward to using it with greater understanding. One place I’ve turned for understanding is Jason Puckett’s Librarian X Web site. He’s presented on Zotero and apparently currently is writing Zotero: A guide for librarians, teachers and researchers, planned to be released mid-year.
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