Zotero is celebrating its birthday. Zotero is an open-source firefox add-on that acts as a citation manager. When you browse bibliographic databases, wikipedia, and online journals, Zotero can automatically determine if the page contains a citation, and extract and save it for you. If your library has a citation linker (aka link resolver, reference linker, sfx server, etc.) then Zotero can help you find the full-text version of the articles you have saved.

If you are a research or student and you already use Firefox, you probably want Zotero. Zotero’s integration with my University’s citation linker revolutionized how I search for articles and keep track of articles. In my opinion is offers dramatic improvements over refworks, though it does not replace all the features of refworks.

If you have looked for articles in the library’s online databases, you have probably seen some green and white “Get It!” icons. If you have actually clicked one of those buttons you might be left with some questions about how they (may or may not) work. Those buttons are one part of the library’s “citation linking” service and in this article I will explain what that service is, what the “Get It!” buttons do, and how you can use the citation linker ways you might not have known about.

(more…)

Ex Libris Group, the maker of the SFX link resolver has announced that it is being merged with Endeavor, the maker of the Voyager ILS.

Kenton Good’s Fearless ILS Predictions turned out to be half-right!

From the announcement it looks like it will be business-as-usual through 2007, with the next major release of both companies ILS products coming out as scheduled. I predict that ALEPH will be dropped, and Voyager kept, and that SFX functions will be integrated into a future version of Voyager.