Bibliography

Originally uploaded by gadl.

The post The Strange Dynamics of Technology Adoption and Promotion in Academia on Dan Cohen’s Digital Humanities Blog and its inspiration, Resistance to Zotero? on Bruce D’Arcus’s darcusblog had me thinking about Zotero and Refworks.

Cohen and D’Arcus wonder why Zotero–a free, open source reference management tool that runs as a Firefox plugin–doesn’t get more love and support from the academic community, particularly from librarians.

As I read it, I thought “I resemble that remark!” I could see where Cohen and D’Arcus were coming from, even though I started feeling defensive at the same time. So I thought I’d unpack this a little bit here.

The whole thing kind of starts with a review of Zotero called Mark of Zotero in Inside Higher Ed, specifically a comment from Steven Bell where he points out that many academics may already have access to a similar bibliographic utility, RefWorks, due to campus-wide subscriptions. In fact, the library where I work subscribes to RefWorks on behalf of the campus.

D’Arcus wonders why librarians in particular are wedded to their proprietary solutions like RefWorks to the point of feeling like a “traitor” if they were to promote Zotero instead.

I don’t know that I would feel like a “traitor” to promote Zotero over our campus subscription to Refworks. In fact, I feel a little bit like a traitor to Zotero: I signed on early as someone interested in Zotero and they sent me a t-shirt. All RefWorks ever sent were some crummy mousepads!

But I don’t really promote Zotero, and I wondered why. It’s a very nice product, it is free, open source, easy to use, etc. Am I a RefWorks corporate tool? Here is what I came up with:

  • My library has invested more than just money in RefWorks. We have invested staff time in learning how it works, developing handouts, coming up with classes to teach people how to use it, and so on. Now that we have had it for a few years, I feel pretty good that students can talk to just about anyone on the reference desk and get competent help with RefWorks. If we were to throw Zotero into the mix, we’d have a big staff education project on our hands. Zotero is nice and easy to use, but I don’t think it is immediately apparent how to use all its functions, so I’d anticipate people would be asking for help if we promoted Zotero. (Personally, I always need to click around a bit before I can remember how to actually create a bibliography from my saved citations.)

  • D’Arcus seems to treat the fact that RefWorks can be acccessed via the web without installing anything from pretty much any computer is just another feature. To my mind, this is the feature that separates RefWorks from Zotero at a school like mine where students move from computer to computer all the time. Wherever they sit down at an internet-enabled computer, on- or off-campus, their data is accessible. No monkeying around with special configurations or putting Firefox and a Zotero library on a USB drive. (I should note that as I write this, I’m having trouble connecting to the RefWorks site. Curse you, gods of irony!)

  • Similarly, as much as I love Firefox, it is important to point out that for many people, using Zotero isn’t as simple as “using Zotero.” It means using an unfamiliar browser and installing a plugin. Easy for me, not so easy for under-motivated students and faculty.

  • I understand, I think, what D’Arcus is saying about “free as in freedom” as it relates to Zotero. It’s certainly one of many things I consider when choosing software. But I wonder if he’s not overstating his case to the point of spreading FUD when he says things like “I don’t think many people realize how crucial bibliographic data is to a scholar. A rather intense frustration can result from feeling that such crucial data is locked-in to closed products that have a history of glacial innovation.” All the reference management tools I have used feature multiple ways to export the data. I just did a quick, unscientific test export from RefWorks to Zotero which appeared to go smoothly, bringing along the bibliographic data and my notes. But maybe D’Arcus means something else, and I’m misreading him.

In the comments on the post by Cohen, D’Arcus says “I almost have to wonder rather cynically if this [promotion of RefWorks over Zotero] doesn’t have to do with some kind of organizational turf-guarding; the belief that librarians alone ‘own’ the bibliographic space?” I’m probably the wrong person to respond to that, but I think the real answer is probably less sinister. For my part, I think that RefWorks is easier to manage and support than Zotero would be, and that the web-accessibility of the program outweighs a lot of other considerations. I am resolving to use Zotero a bit more, so I’ll be better able to recommend it to students or faculty when it would be more appropriate. And if they come up with a zero-install web-based version, you can bet I will look at it very carefully indeed.