Thing 14: Zotero, Mendeley, CiteULike

I am one of the odd people who actually prefer to create my citations by hand.  I have become familiar with a few different citation styles and do not mind taking the time to plug the information in by hand.  I am confident that I have cited my sources correctly.  I would rarely use any of these tools myself.

That said, however, I know the students I work with and many other people dread citing.  Citation programs, such as RefWorks, Zotero, and Mendeley simplify the process and allow these people to focus on the content of their papers.  Even if I will rarely turn to one of these programs myself, I know the value of them for others. 

RefWorks is a proprietary citation software.  The schools I have attended subscribed to RefWorks and the college where I work also subscribes to it.  Although the software has many useful features, and has unlimited size, the students I help find it a bit overwhelming. 

Zotero, an open source extension for Firefox, is much simpler to use and works with a wide range of source types.  When I used it for class, I appreciated its versatility and its ease of use.  In addition, up to a certain size, it is free.  Creating group folders was another highlight of the extension.  If the college where I work allowed students to download programs, I would recommend it to them.  For the moment, I will reserve it for future patrons.

For this Thing, I downloaded Mendeley, another free (to a point) tool.  Mendeley works with a variety of browsers and is compatible with PCs, Macs, and Linux machines.  Unlike Zotero, the focus of Mendeley seems to be on the user's own work and collaboration through that work.  It is possible to use Mendeley to gather sources for documents, just as it is in Zotero and RefWorks, but this option seems secondary to the purposes of content creation and content sharing.  Adding documents to Mendeley, provided they are in PDF format, is easy as well.  The drag-and-drop feature simplifies the process of adding documents you have already saved.  Searching within Mendeley also works well.  I especially appreciated the ability to limit a search to open access content.  Other useful features were the ability to highlight text in a document and to add sticky notes.  Mendeley has a lot to offer.

None of these tools is directly comparable to another.  Of these three, I would turn first to Zotero for my own research needs, if I were to use one at all.  I would recommend Mendeley to those carrying out academic research.  Seeing as both require downloads, however, I will reserve these resources for future use.  For the moment, I will continue to promote RefWorks to my library's users.