As an undergraduate student studying History writing research papers was a ever present reality of my existence. When I went into grad school the papers got longer and the standards for quality of research and quantity of sources only got higher.

One of the greatest challenges for me was to adequately organize and record research for later analysis, organization and writing. The 3” x 5″ card method which I learned in middle school was about the best I could ever come up with, though sometimes I made do with a few sheets of notebook paper (with various quotes, and notes strewn all over).

There was also the difficulty of remembering or finding the exact way to cite a particular source. The nuance of this is seemingly endless, and can feel like an unproductive use of time for the purpose of learning. (Though, important for the presentation of the paper to meet academic standards.) Sometimes accurately recording bibliographic information can take insane amounts of time, with me poring over Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers on the specifics of how to cite a particular government document, or how to cite something translated from another language which is also a part of a series or collection of books etc.

As I am now once again engaged in academic study, now as a part time seminary student at RTS, I am incredibly excited to have discovered a technological solution to such research paper writing woes.

Zotero, dubbed “the next-gen research tool”, is a free downloadable extension of the FireFox browser (available for both Mac and PC) and enables the user to automatically capture bibliographical information, directly from search databases and even sites like Amazon.com. It also makes it easy to record and organize notes and quotes from your various sources in an I Tunes like format. When it comes time to reference a source, whether by in text citation, footnote, or even the entire bibliography it’s just a couple of clicks and this can be automatically generated for you. Zotero is compatible with Microsoft Word as well as OpenOffice, and supports numerous citation styles including MLA, APA and the Chicago Style.

In short it does two main things. 1. It helps you to spend more time actually doing research and less time trying to figure out the proper formatting for citation. 2. It helps you to organize your actual research notes.

Not only does such a thing exist, but it’s free! I’m convinced that Zotero will be a tremendous help for my upcoming research papers and all the more so for my Master’s Thesis. And no, they are not paying me to say this, I just think it’s a great tool, and wish it existed a long time ago. It could have probably saved me a lot of unnecessary stress, and deadline anxiety!

If you are doing any kind of academic research that requires proper citation of sources, and are relatively competent on a computer Zotero is well worth looking into and the minimal amount of time it will take to familiarize yourself with the interface.