Once upon a time, we academics wrote down bibliographic details on note cards and the like, and cursed when we couldn't recall which journal or hadn't recorded which page we'd found that excellent quotation. (Not to mention the cursing as we assembled our citations and bibliographies). Research and writing has, of course, changed, and Zotero is one tool that recognizes that much research nowadays occurs in the web-browser.

At its most basic level, Zotero is a citation manager, designed to store and manage bibliographic references, such as books and articles. Zotero is a browser-based tool that allows you to capture publication information as you surf. Zotero extracts bibliographic data from websites but can also capture whole pages, attached files, and full text as well. Citations can then be exported as formatted references via word processor plugins. And Zotero also provides a robust tagging system via an iTunes-like interface, where references can be catalogued and shared.

Zotero has long been available as a Firefox extension, but announces today the Zotero Everywhere initiative, that thanks to funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will make the tool more accessible.

Zotero Everywhere has several components: support for all major browsers, a standalone desktop version (for Mac, Windows, and Linux), and an expanded API that will provide both web and mobile access to Zotero libraries. Up til now, the Zotero API has been read-only, but Zotero is opening the write API to the public, allowing developers to integrate Zotero's features into their own apps.

Zotero is a project of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Earlier this year, Zotero, which is based at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, opened up the online components to its service when it released the first beta of version 1.5 of its plugin, including the ability to access a backup of libraries online and sync between different computers, as well as some very rudimentary social networking features.

Today's update represents a major step forward from Zotero's first online offerings. Now, users who are working on collaborative projects can finally share their research in an easy, straightforward manner. If you are working on a research project in a group, for example, you can now easily create a new group and all the members of the group can just add the papers and books they found to this new group, including notes and other remarks they added to the new entry.

Sadly, though, Zotero doesn't offer a storage solution yet, so every group member still has to track down the actual documents (the team is looking into adding this function, though).

Groups Make Zotero a Great Tool for Users Outside of Academia as Well

This update will also make Zotero more interesting for users outside of academia. While the service's focus is obviously on making it easy for academic users to manage their research and to create bibliographies, Zotero can also function as a general bookmarking tool for any kind of purpose.

Coming Soon: Recommendations, Storage, Feeds

Some of the most exciting changes to Zotero are still ahead. The team also announced that it expects to roll out a recommendation engine in the near future, as well as a storage solution for sharing attached files (PDFs of academic papers, for example), as well as the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds from public groups and libraries.

Make a Backup!

If you are already using Zotero, we recommend that you back your library up before you update. In our own experience, Zotero updates have never been a problem, but the data you have saved in Zotero so far is probably something you don't want to lose due to a freak accident.