I’m not an academic but that is not stopping me from futzing around with Zotero.

@canion would you know if it runs natively on Apple Silicon?

@rom I’m away from macOS for the next few days. Will check when I get back to the computer.

@canion thanks Sir

@canion This is so funny. I’ve had to force myself NOT to investigate Zotero so many times because I, too, am not an academic (though I do sort of play at being one). So, hey, let me know what you think 🤣.

@agilelisa We both must fit a particular archetype. You also like agile, I like lean. I imagine we would get along well over a cup of a coffee!

@rom it does. @canion

@agilelisa @canion For what it’s worth, I am an academic, and I can’t stand reference managers, so if I’m not going to use Zotero, I’m glad non-academics are getting some use out of it!

@canion Well, there’s the difference, tea for me! Otherwise, we are nearly identical twins.

@canion I’m a non-academic who loves Zotero. I co-authored academic papers back in that other millennium. What a pain to cite stuff manually. Also, it functions as a personal book, article (podcast, website) list for me – if I’m wondering about that book whose title I forgot that I read about something, I can search Zotero and usually figure out what the source was. You can tag stuff, you can write notes – for me, it’s been super helpful.

@canion I’ve never heard of Zotero but I love DEVONthink. DEVONthink was really handy for keeping reference stuff for flying around Europe last month (little notes and downloaded articles, etc).

@canion The DEVONthink mobile apps have gotten really good. My iPhone and iPad are my primary computers so functional mobile apps are a must for me.

@canion FWIW I’ve enjoyed Zotero. I guess Word finally has a decent manager now, but sometimes I still wrote in LaTeX and like the portability. And the shared project bibliographies when collaborating.

@canion @agilelisa Zotero is fantastic with nonacademic articles, books, websites, podcasts, etc. That’s what I use it for. I use it because I want to know what I’ve read or listened to and how to find it again if I want to get back to it; and also I want to give credit to other people’s ideas when I write about them in my blogs. Any reference cited on my blogs is sitting in my Zotero folder.

@canion @agilelisa Lemme just rummage through my very non-academic sources stashed in Zotero here, as I procrastinate on something else… for instance,

…here’s a citation of a YouTube video showing Mary Poppins’ bag:
Mary Poppins (1964) Magic bag (no date). Available at: www.youtube.com/watch (Accessed: 5 July 2021).

…for a history book for general readers:
Richardson, H.C. (2020) How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America. Illustrated edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

…for a web page sourcing a favorite quote of mine:
‘The Graveyards Are Full of Indispensable Men – Quote Investigator’ (no date). Available at: quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/2… (Accessed: 5 July 2021).

…a podcast episode:
‎Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris: Happiness Takes Work | Sonja Lyubomirsky on Apple Podcasts (no date) Apple Podcasts. Available at: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… (Accessed: 29 July 2020).

You can enter stuff by ISBN number. You can install a browser tool to clip stuff directly into Zotero. You can pick your citation style. I have it export the citation to bibliography format using “Cite Them Right” system from Harvard.

It also includes Chicago Manual of Style, APA, Elsevier, MLA, and many other citation conventions. It also automatically updates the citation resources editions.

It is awesome, and I LOVE it. (looks around, whispers I even cite my own blog posts. Why? Because I like to be able to find my stuff later, and I know that seven months after writing something, I might be wondering, “which one was that post where I wrote about XYZ?” and I can run a search on XYZ and boom, there it is.)

Sigh. I suppose I had better get back to work now.

@annahavron Nice! Thank you for this write up on the uses of Zotero.

@rom I’m afraid Zotero is not Apple Silicon native. It remains an Intel binary.

@annahavron This is quite a fantastic example of the benefits of Zotero! Thank you for sharing (and I hope you enjoyed your procrastination time!)

@canion @rom Not a native maybe but the app works fine on my M1 iMac

@canion oh. Thanks. I don’t like running Rosetta. :)

@canion This is my thanks to you for your post way back when, alerting me to the joys of the johnnydecimal system.

@annahavron You’re welcome!