Zo-what? ZOTERO

First Zotero is here.Basically, it works as a good, free, substitute for softwares and Internet services like Refworks or Endnote. Zotero was conceived by historians, and therefore is well suited to their needs, their bibliographical needs. Here is a tutorial.

This short post only aims at proving the bibliographical capability of Zotero.

Here is a short (and uncomplete) bibliography on Education of women in communist China (1949 to this day) made simple by the use of Zotero:

Theodore Hsi-En Chen, “Education and Propaganda in Communist China,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 277 (Septembre 1951): 135-145.

Esther Ngan-Ling Chow, Naihua Zhang, et Jinling Wang, “Promising and Contested Fields: Women's Studies and Sociology of Women/Gender in Contemporary China,” Gender and Society 18, n°. 2 (Avril 2004): 161-188.

William Lavely et al., “The Rise in Female Education in China: National and Regional Patterns,” The China Quarterly, n°. 121 (Mars 1990): 61-93.

Kimberley Ens Manning, “The Gendered Politics of Woman-Work: Rethinking Radicalism in the Great Leap Forward,” Modern China 32, n°. 3 (Juillet 2006): 349-384.

Tissier Patrick, L'éducation en Chine populaire, sans date.

Suzanne Pepper, “Education and Revolution: The "Chinese Model" Revised,” Asian Survey 18, n°. 9 (Septembre 1978): 847-890.

Suzanne Pepper, China's education reform in the 1980s: policies, issues, and historical perspectives (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California at Berkeley, Center for Chinese Studies, 1990).

Peter J. Seybolt, “The Yenan Revolution in Mass Education,” The China Quarterly, n°. 48 (Décembre 1971): 641-669.

Xiaoling Shu, “Education and Gender Egalitarianism: The Case of China,” Sociology of Education 77, n°. 4 (Octobre 2004): 311-336.

This is not a perfect tool, but it is perfectible. For example in our case, surnames not always appear after the first name, their has been a choice of a Harvard bibliographical style (which is highly controversial here in France), etc.

These minor defects can be fixed: once Zotero grabs a reference on a library site (unfortunately not all library sites allow for it) or on Jstor, and if no error message pops in, the user (i.e. me) can always complete the bibliographical notice that appears in the Zotero plugin on Firefox (another major flaw to some: Zotero is firefox compatible only): add the number of pages, correct a wrong wording (there one realizes the uneven quality of library sites indexing).
It has been rumored (actually it is probably true) that one can engineer one's own bibliographical style (useful to a French Graduate student since Zotero is American based and did not particularly think of me), but I have not set foot in that adventure.


Going beyond the scope of this paper (proving the simple beauty of making bibliographies with Zotero), I would add that Zotero has many other interesting features, some of which I do not even know, some I haven't used:
- Each reference can be enriched by tags, attached files, descriptions, allowing to document more precisely why I chose one reference and facilitating future works.
- Building a bibliography can be a collaborative venture.
- I can find other people interested by what I do.

Etc.

Conclusion : Get it.

Post Scriptum :

short bibliography of Zotero compatible sites, made with Zotero :

“BnF catalogue général - Recherche simple,” sans date, http://catalogue.bnf.fr/jsp/recherchemots_simple.jsp?nouvelleRecherche=O&nouveaute=O&host=catalogue.
“Google Livres,” sans date, http://books.google.fr/.
“Library of Congress Online Catalogs,” sans date, http://catalog.loc.gov/.
“Millennium Web Catalog,” sans date, http://las.sinica.edu.tw:1085/*eng.
“Nation Taiwan University Library Online Catalog,” sans date, http://tulips.ntu.edu.tw/search/Y.
“OLIS homepage,” sans date, http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/olis/.
“Portail Denis Diderot,” sans date, http://primo.bibliotheque-diderot.org:1701/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&vid=BDD&dstmp=1288269481397&fromLogin=true.
“WorldCat.org : le plus grand catalogue de bibliothèques au monde,” sans date, http://www.worldcat.org/?lang=fr.