Lesson 7: Zotero - Web research assistant (Think, Explore & Explain)

Think
1. Before you began this course, what did you do (or still do) when you needed to collect, manage, and keep a record of citation details of your Web research? How effective do you think these information management strategies were?

I simply took notes of the citation lists when I need to write reports for the references. Since almost every professors have different guidelines of citation especially in the field of life sciences professors. For example, their guidelines differ in that writing a last name first if the book is written by on ly one author, but on the other hand, if the book is written by the multiple authors, I have to write his/her first name first. Although this is just one example of making the citation lists, I had (=have) to adapt the differences of making the citations when writing reports. Therefore, I thought that it is not nearly possible to write the references almost automatically by some kind of the softwares because the professors guidelines are very distinct from each other. Although I am always thining that it is not efficient to write references, I could not find a better ways to organize the citaiton lists. About a few years ago, I thought by myself whether I should even create some kind of free softwares, which adopt various distinctiveness of making citation lists.

2. In your view, what kinds of things would you want a Web research tool to be able to do?

If possible, I certainly want the web research tools to be able to automatically create the citation lists when I click some of the buttons on the browser. Although I need to have about 10 citation lists per report, the complexities of making the citation lists grow much more to the point where I write academic papers, which require much more citation lists. Therefore, if I can use the Web research tool to make a citation lists, that will help me a lot when writing academic papers.


Explain
1. What are the main skills needed to use Zotero?

In order to fully utilize Zotero, I think the users have to understand the purposes of the references. Since Zotero automatically generates the citation lists, the users are necessary to understand what is the purpose of making references. The purposes of making references are to show the readers where I did get those information come from. If the users forgot the purposes of making references by using the Web research softwares, the significance of the report itself will be decreased.

2. What are the affordances of Zotero (what does it make possible, what does it impede)?

What does it make possible is that Zotero reduces the complexities of making the citation lists and the valuable time when writing reports and academic papers. To be honest, writing references when the time is limited is frustrating process. Therefore, Zotero reduces the complexities of making the citation lists and a valuable time for writing reports and academic papers. On the other hand, what it can't do is that Zotero can not adapt many other ways of making the citation lists. In other words, Zotero have just a few ways of making citation lists such as Nature and National Library of Medicine. Although these were widely known among the public, the use among the scientific researchers are limited. They are more likely to use the "Cell", which is more accepted by the academics.

3. How can Zotero be used to network professionally and connect you (& other students) to learning resources?

Since Zotero is not a networking software, networking professional through the software is difficult. But on the other hand, the professional networking might become possible when Zotero is introduced in the classroom at school. Through the use of Zotero in the classroom, students can interact through the functions of Zotero. I think that this is an example of the concept of "Education 2.0".

4. What skills and understandings have you learned about Zotero that may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?

Although I gave up of collecting and managing the references information about a few years ago and I manually create those references information, the development of the social softwares and the waves of Web 2.0 (probably Web 3.0 right now) are much faster than I thought. By the use of Zotero throught this lesson, I actually feel and experienced that keeping up with the developments of the latest softwares make possible to work efficiently. Those approaches will make difference among the others.