While diligently plugging away at refining Zotero’s syncing features, Team Z found itself adding such a massive amount of new functionality that the software required nothing less than a whole new version number. Also, Firefox was doing it. Most important among the new features is the long-anticipated ability to collaborate in groups and group libraries.

Interact With Groups Through the Firefox Add-On

Groups provide a powerful way to share collections with a class, work closely with a colleague on a project, keep track of conversations in your field more broadly, and keep tabs on what people at your institution or in your department are working on. To copy items into any of your groups just drag and drop items from your library into any of your group libraries and subcollections. Below you can see an image of your groups inside Zotero.

Interact With Groups Through the Website

Every group also has its own web page. For public groups, this page acts as a public portal for the group’s collaborative work. For private groups, the page offers a way for group members to interact with the group’s collections from anywhere.

Zotero 2.0’s group abilities transform an already powerful personal research tool into a collaborative platform for research. As we refine this beta release, the Zotero team will roll out its recommendation engine, a storage solution for sharing attached files, more ways to navigate through collections online, and the ability to view feeds from public groups and libraries. Download Zotero 2.0 today!

We are now accepting applications for the second Zotero trainers workshop, to be held July 30-31st at Emory University in Atlanta. At this info-packed and fun-filled two-day event, participants will acquire a solid understanding of Zotero’s capabilities and how those capabilities can best meet their users’ needs. Beyond acquiring a detailed understanding of the program, participants will learn: best-practices for demo-ing and supporting Zotero at their institution; approaches for developing institution-specific documentation; and steps for migrating user data to and from other research management tools.

The first workshop was held at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA and drew a diverse group of public and university librarians, faculty members, and educational technologists. Participants hailed from institutions as far away as Seattle and backgrounds as diverse as law and the humanities.

“For anyone considering working with Zotero – a game-changer, in my opinion – this workshop is essential. I not only expanded my knowledge of how Zotero works, but now I’m also able to teach our member libraries how, when, and why Zotero is an invaluable research management tool for the communities they serve.”- Jason Kucsma, Emerging Technologies Manager, Metropolitan New York Library Council

Whether or not you can attend the workshop, consider joining the “Zotero evangelist” Google group, which sustains an ongoing conversation between workshop participants and other Zotero trainers.

The cost to attend the workshop is $350, and due to the hands-on nature of these workshops, enrollment is limited. The Zotero team will be accepting applications through May 31st and applications will be considered according to the following criteria:

1. Your current or future role in representing Zotero on your campus

2. Your institution’s plans for, or interest in, adopting Zotero

3. Maximum representation of different campuses: we will most likely only accept one or two individuals from any single institution and are seeking representation from a range of schools.

Application details and forms are located here, and applicants will receive confirmation of their acceptance by June 10th, 2009.

Applicants not accepted to this workshop will be welcome to apply to the next one, planned for fall 2009 at the University of Washington in Seattle. More information regarding this and later workshops will be released as available.

For the past two and half years the Zotero team has carefully listened to user requests for interoperability with Internet Explorer, Opera, and other web browsers, and today the project is excited to announce new compatibility with browsers other than Firefox, starting with the venerable and rock-solid NCSA Mosaic. “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” said Zotero co-director Sean Takats, “and we’re beginning at the beginning.”

Co-Director Dan Cohen stated that the Mosaic release, code-named “Zotero Classic,” was only the first step in toning down the “next-generation research tool” rhetoric that has dogged the project from the beginning. He revealed that the next release, known internally as “Zotero Graphite,” would involve interns, pencils, and possibly a fax machine.

The Zotero team expects performance to improve dramatically with forthcoming support for Netscape Navigator 1.0. “I’m thrilled about replacing Zotero’s sqlite backend with blink-element-powered Morse code,” admitted Lead Developer Dan Stillman. Within ten years the team expects to work its way through every browser ever created. “Of course by then, computers will be so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them,” suggested Community Lead Trevor Owens.

One of the requests from our gathering of Zotero trainers and promoters at the Zotero workshop last month was for more resources to help promote and spread Zotero at their institutions. To help support our evangelists, we have pulled together this list of ten reasons for institutions to adopt Zotero. Consider forwarding this on to the folks that make tech decisions at your institution. We have also put the list together as an attractive PDF.

1) Easy-To-Use Means Easy-To-Support
Users overwhelmingly report that Zotero is easy to use and intuitive. After watching a five-minute introductory video on Zotero, many users have more than enough knowledge to accomplish basic research tasks.

2) Save Money With Free Open Source Software
Say goodbye to expensive escalating licensing fees. Adopt Zotero and pay nothing. Not only can you use Zotero for free, but all the documentation at Zotero.org is yours to reuse and repurpose. The support community at Zotero.org provides an experienced responsive community to support the software and assist you in your efforts.

3) Hundreds of Institutions Recommend Zotero to Their Faculty and Students
Zotero is already recommended by more than a hundred institutions from around the world, including MIT, Stanford, and Yale. Zotero’s track record of success at these leading institutions underscores its ease of use and elegance as a research management tool.

4) A Single Research Management Solution For Every User, Everywhere
Whether your users run Windows, MacOS or Linux, Zotero is available to them. By syncing their data with the Zotero server, users can move between computers at home and at school with ease, even if the operating systems are different. Users don’t even need their own computers, because they can run Zotero off a small flash drive, which they can purchase for only a few dollars. With Zotero’s web interface, users can browse their collections online, even with mobile devices. Simply put, Zotero is wherever your users are.

5) Did We Mention It’s Award Winning?
Zotero was selected as the best reference management tool at CiteFest 2008 by Northwestern University’s Library and Academic Technologies group. That’s right, better than other, more costly, software alternatives. Zotero is among the “Best Free Software” available, as voted by PC Magazine in both 2007 and 2008. Zotero was also named Best Instructional Software of 2007 by the Information Technology and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.

6) An Opportunity For Your Institution to Leave Its Mark
Zotero’s open and extensible nature means that, beyond offering a powerful resource to your students at a no cost, Zotero also offers a potential avenue for your institution to make lasting contributions to the open-source community. For example, the University of Michigan’s School of Information recently won funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to launch a new million-dollar information literacy game, Bibliobouts, on top of Zotero. Similarly, Concordia University’s digital history lab was granted funds from the  Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to develop Vertov, a video annotation tool for Zotero. Both instances demonstrate how institutions can make Zotero more than a piece of software used on their campus; it can also provide a means to contribute and make your mark on the scholarly cyberinfrastructure.

7) Your Users’ Data is Theirs, Now and Forever
Everything your users do with Zotero is theirs in perpetuity. As a project developed by scholars with a commitment to openness and with a focus on the end-user, Zotero makes no claim of ownership or control over any of your users’ work with Zotero, and invites users to share and collaborate without fear of their work being co-opted.

8 ) Give Your Users Something They Can Take With Them
Licensed research management platforms may provide your users with functional services, but, chances are, your software license ends when your students graduate. Shouldn’t your users have access to their research after graduation? Zotero is free to everyone; that means your students will always have access to their collections.

9) Adherence to Open Standards Offers Flexibility
Zotero is committed to data portability and interoperability through adherence to existing open standards. Software makers which employ site-licensing fees have a vested interest in locking users into their own proprietary formats. Zotero makes it as easy as possible to migrate data to and from other applications.

10) Give Your Users The Freedom To Work In Their Native Language
Zotero runs in more than thirty languages, so chances are good that most of the languages spoken on your campus are available. This sort of linguistic agnosticism means that Zotero runs smoothly for people all around the world. Any languages not already supported can easily be added through the BabelZilla project.