Zotero, to know you is to love you

This is a guide for installing and setting up Zotero. This is quite possibly the best piece of software, ever. Sit down, take a deep breath and keep reading.

As a PhD student, I spend most of my time searching for, reading, organising, and citing journal articles. Zotero is a free open source citation/reference/bibliography manager. It is a Firefox 2.0 (or later) extension. This means that (a) it's free, (b) it's small (and therefore fast), and (c) you need Firefox to use it. And, it wipes the floor with Endnote.

Now I know what you're all thinking: "Oh, I can't be bothered re-entering all of my references into a new program. I've been using Endnote for years. I've got 200 references in Endnote. It crashes, it's shit, I hate it, but I've taken a library course on it and invested hours in entering references into it. Blah blah blah."

"Why is Zotero better than Endnote?" I hear you ask. Well due to my 10,000 word blog post limit I will keep it brief:

1. It's a Firefox extension, not a program. You never have to leave the browser, which is where you find references, right?;
2. If it recognises a reference in any webpage, one click on the Zotero icon saves the reference (title, author, year, keywords, abstract - whatever) to your library. Here's a list of sites that Zotero supports;
3. In the case that it doesn't recognise a reference, you can download the citation in any of these formats: MODS, Bib Tex, MARC, RDF, RIS, Refer, BiblX, as Zotero recognises all of them! After the download, it takes literally two clicks to import - never copy and paste field-by-field ever again. Never worry about connection or filter files ever again;
   
4. You can organise your references in folders, smart lists (according to criteria), add tags (thank you Lord);
5. You can attach your references to files, links, images, entire web sites - whatever;
6. You can search-as-you-type through your entire library - instant search results;
7. Zotero stores everything on your computer in a subdirectory of your Firefox profile directory, so Zotero can be used offline as well;
8. You can format references in APA, MLA and more styles are coming;
   
9. You can export your library into the formats mentioned above, including the Zotero-native RDF format. This means that you can back up your library at any time and sync it across computers (it gets better and better - I know);
10. You can generate reference lists for any selection of files in your library and output to a RTF or HTML file, copy straight to the clipboard, or print the reference list directly (this is too much, I need to lie down).

The only thing it doesn't do, yet, is integrate directly into your word processor. When it will integrate, in future versions, it will be compatible with more than just MS Word (thank you again Lord).

By now, you should know that you want it. I'm going to assume that you can install Firefox and Zotero on your own - so I'm gonna skip this step. The Zotero homepage has a user guide and FAQ, not that you'll need it. Do you want to know why? Because you can use this software without needing to do a course at the library. It will make sense from the minute you install it because things are where you would expect them to be!

However, importing your Endnote library into Zotero isn't as transparent as it should be. This is of course Endnote's fault, but I refuse to get political. I have put together this foolproof guide below. Follow it religiously.

Importing your Endnote library into Zotero takes about 30 seconds. This is what you do:

1. Download this file and save it to your Styles folder in your Endnote directory which is probably here C:\Program Files\EndNote #\Styles where # = your version number of Endnote.
2. Open your Endnote library in Endnote, and select all of your references (Ctrl+A). Click on the pull-down menu that lets you select the reference format and click Select another style.
3. Scroll to and click on the reference style: Bibtex Export.
4. Click File|Export and export your references to the desktop.
   
5. Import this file into Zotero by clicking on the icon of a cog and selecting this .txt file. That's it. Uninstall Endnote and dance around the office.
   

Useful links:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
http://www.zotero.org/
ftp://support.isiresearchsoft.com/pub/bibtex/bibtex_export.ens
http://roslidaud.blogspot.com/2006/09/convert-endnote-to-bibtex.html