Thanks to Nicole Engard at What I Learned Today, I saw that Zotero’s public beta has begun. You need to be running Firefox 2.0, itself a beta release, so I’m downloading that in the background as I type.

Zotero is a citation manager (along the lines of RefWorks or EndNote) that works right in the Firefox browser. I have yet to actually give it a try, so I don’t have an opinion on Zotero yet, but I can say that I am very excited by its potential. The more I think about it, the more I believe we need to better integrate library and academic technology into the way people really use the web, instead of expecting them to un-learn everything they know about the way the web works. It’s too early to know if Zotero will be effective, but I think that it working on the right problem. It’s also free, open-source software.

I am also pleased that the buzz around Zotero brought the Center for History and New Media to my attention. Along with Zotero, I intend to check out their other tools; just a few weeks ago, faculty here were talking about how useful something like the Syllabus Finder would be.

Tags: freeasinbeer, freeasinfreedom, academic, citations, zotero, firefox, plugin