First post: Zotero

I'm starting this blog to record and share things I enjoy. There are LOTS of things I like thinking about and learning about. Most of them are science-y. This one is for anyone who does research (any research, not just scientific).

How it works: You download the Mozilla extension Zotero. Then you can either import a collection of pdfs/Endnote library, or you can build a new one. When you are reading a paper online, you click a button on the browser, and it downloads the bibliographic information and any other files you want (personal notes, keywords, pdfs, etc). You can collaborate with groups to share your references, and there are hundreds of options for citation styles to use with your favorite word processor.

It took me about 10 minutes to upload several hundred pdfs to a library. Now I can access them from any computer, do full text searches, and export bibliographies in whatever style I need (like Endnote does). Its free, with an active support community. There are issues (it duplicates some things, has weird period placement, etc) but for this would have makes it so much easier to keep track of references for term papers, grants, etc. First 100 MB of file storage is free.