GC Technology: Zotero Takes on EndNote and RefWorks
Thanks to the software upgrades implemented over the summer, students now have access to three different bibliographic programs for their research. EndNote, RefWorks, and Zotero are all part of the standard software package installed on public computers at the Graduate Center and accessible by students from home.
“I wanted to give the community as many possibilities [for documenting] scholarly books and articles but also new media,” said Dr. Steve Brier, Vice President for Information Technology and External Programs. “This [Zotero] opened up a set of possibilities.”
Zotero is the newest and most prolific of the three programs. Zotero is a free program that is embedded in Mozilla’s Firefox internet browser, meaning that once a user has downloaded the Zotero add-on, they will have access to their Zotero database via their Firefox browser. Once installed, there is small icon on the bottom right-side corner of the Firefox browser that says “Zotero.” Users can click on this button to bookmark a page and have a bibliographic entry automatically generated by Zotero.
What sets Zotero apart from the others? Trever Owens, Zotero’s Technology Evangelist, wrote that one of the main distinguishing components of this program was that it was “built by practicing researchers and teachers… in response to many of their frustrations with previous tools.” Zotero was developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University with grant support by the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The goal was to build an open-source platform so that users could catalogue their research sources for free. “[Zotero] is particularly good for those in the humanities and social sciences,” Brier said.
“Zotero has already reached 250,000 users,” Brier wrote in an email to the GC Advocate, which refers to the number of “unique IPs of users, not downloads, which is of course well over that number.” Brier also noted the global utility of this new software: as of this fall it supports 17 different languages, and will soon include Arabic, amongst others. Zotero will also soon have the capability to allow users to share bibliographic information, once the newest version of the program is up and running (Zotero 2.0).
While Zotero is the newest of the bibliographic software available via the GC, there are two other programs that students have access to: EndNote and RefWorks. Scott Johnston, Research Librarian at the Mina Rees Library, said, “for a long time we had nothing at all,” in terms of bibliographic software. “We have now had EndNote for close to three years,” he said, “and it is the most respected name in the business.” One of the reasons why EndNote is considered “superior” up until now is that as one of the first bibliographic software programs on the market, EndNote has been able to correct many problems, said Johnston.
Mina Rees Library Chief Librarian Julie Cunningham told the GC Advocate that “EndNote was originally selected by the Grad Center because it was thought to be the most highly developed citation management software that was available, offered the most extensive set of capabilities for organizing research done by doctoral level students and faculty, and was in widespread use at doctoral and research institutions.”
Johnston concurred, noting that “when we started EndNote, it was incredibly popular,” referring to the software workshops offered regularly by the Research division of the library. “It is pretty good, but has its limitations.”
One of the main limitations of EndNote is that it is a program downloaded directly onto one’s computer, again meaning that if students actively travel between and work from different computers, they will not have all of their EndNote work on the same drive. This is where the third bibliographic program, RefWorks, comes in.
RefWorks is a web-based application, so that users can log in form anywhere, do their work, and have it stored on an internet-based system. “The decision to fund RefWorks for CUNY-wide access,” said Cunningham, “was made by CUNY’s central IT Steering Committee to serve the needs of broader categories of students.” The GC has now had RefWorks licenses for just over one year.
Johnston noted that, “RefWorks has really come a long way in the past several years… at first it was cumbersome and sluggish.” In terms of his own research, Johnston said that “I find EndNote a little more flexible. RefWorks tends to be a little more clunky.” The philosophy of RefWorks, said Johnston, “was to make it more user-friendly [than EndNote] but still it has a bit to go.”
All three programs thus have their pluses and minuses. “The biggest plus of EndNote is also the minus: it is software downloaded to a computer,” Johnston said. “It is fast, it is customizable, and the user has total ownership of their data.” As it is a software download, it is not easily portable from one computer to another.
“The plus of RefWorks is that it is an account you can access from any computer,” he said. “However, it can be really slow and sluggish. But, some feel a little more secure that their data is in storage out there,” that is, that it is backed up somewhere other than their computer’s hard drive.
And Zotero? Because it is a browser-based application, users who switch frequently from computer to computer (like many students do between home and the GC computers) can save the Firefox browser to a USB key and work from that version of the browser. Despite this, “Zotero looks really great,” Johnston said. “The nature of its HISTORY means it is a little ways away for being ideal for everybody.” He noted, however, that Zotero is quickly closing the gap. “If I were working on a dissertation right now,” said Johnston, “I’d use EndNote but would want to immerse myself in Zotero for its ability to work with websites. It is cutting edge.”
Brier said that he uses Zotero in his present research and noted that researchers who work with a lot of new media sources may find Zotero most suited to their needs. “It is really amazingly helpful for research,” he said.
While Zotero was free for the GC — or anyone — to download and install, Brier said that both EndNote and RefWorks cost money. “[EndNote and RefWorks] are both good in terms of [cataloguing] old style references,” he said, referring to more traditional books and print articles. “They help you keep track of all sources that you are using.” According to Brier, the Student Technology Fee covers the annual licenses for EndNote software (roughly $10,000 per academic year), while around $2,100 of the Student Tech Fee is applied towards the licensing fees paid to the CUNY Central Office for academic software, including RefWorks, licensed by CIS each year.
Despite their significant costs, Brier said that there are no plans for eliminating EndNote or RefWorks licensing for students at the Graduate Center anytime in the near future. He acknowledged that researchers already in the middle of their projects might be loathe to switch half-way through. “We will continue to support them for as long as we need to,” Brier said of the GC IT’s financial commitment to EndNote and RefWorks. n
Users can download both Firefox (www.mozilla.com/firefox) and Zotero (www.zotero.org) for free. Links for library support for EndNote and RefWorks may be found at:
- EndNote: http://library.gc.cuny.edu/databases/endnote/
- RefWorks: http://library.gc.cuny.edu/databases/refworks.html
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