Resource Post: Using Firefox and Zotero to Keep Research Notes

As you research, you keep notes. You can keep your notes on three by five cards, in a bound notebook, or in an electronic format, like Google Documents. Electronic formats have the advantage of being able to be sorted by tags or searched by keywords, allowing you to more quickly moved from gathering information to outlining your research.

Readers of research need to know from where your ideas come. Doing respected research means making your means available to your readers, so it can be reproduced, or they can tell where you went wrong. Either way, research without documentation if much like an opinions without supporting evidence, everyone has an opinion, so--while it isn't worthless without support--its value is greatly reduced.

Downloading the free and open source browser Firefox and adding the research extension, Zotero, can help you with the task of keeping research notes. Zotero allows you to capture web pages, paper articles and books published online, or to capture part of them. Each time you capture such an entry, Zotero allows you to capture bibliographic information along with what you have captured. It will even help you prepare bibliographies, and export them to OpenOffice or to Word.

Here's a link to Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/


Here's a link to Zotero: http://www.zotero.org/