Get ZoteroLast year, I looked for software to manage bibliographies. I used Endnote for a year, and now I’m using Zotero.

Endnote, from Thompson ResearchSoft, is one of the leaders in reference management software. It works fairly well, and is compatible with many online databases. It’s “Cite While You Write” feature makes creating footnotes easier, even if it does require some editing. It’s fairly expensive, though; I bought it only because it was available at a very reduced price. For the time that it saved, it was worth every penny of the reduced price. Endnote does have some problems. It seems to be designed more for the sciences than the humanities, and it is absolutely worthless for taking notes.

Zotero, however, has supplanted Endnote in my affections. Zotero is free software from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It’s an extension for Firefox, so it works within the browser and is easy to install. The software recognizes bibliographic data on websites and can add it your reference list with one click. Each entry can have notes, links, tags, and other data associated with it. Microsoft Word and Open Office Writer both have plugins that allow you to cite works from Zotero. Future versions will allow you to save your references online so that you can access them from any computer. In my estimation, Zotero beats any other reference management software. And it’s completely free.

Because all my sources for my thesis are in Endnote, I’m going to continue to use it until I finish the thesis. (I could export from Endnote to Zotero, but I’d rather not.) For all my other work, Zotero is my tool of choice. At the end of this semester, I’d be more than willing to sell you a copy of Endnote.