We are excited to announce the release of the second Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview. Among the exciting improvements in 1.5 SP2 you will find:

Attachment syncing: All attached files can now be synced via a user’s own WebDAV server (e.g. iDisk, Jungle Disk, university-provided web storage). Although some work remains to be done on attachment syncing, it’s working great now, and we’re ready for feedback from the community.

Automatic proxy support: This release automatically detects most major university proxy systems and seamlessly proxies URLs.

Retrieve Metadata from PDFs: Zotero can now retrieve metadata for your stray PDFs. See this feature in action in this screencast.

School is back in session and the results are in. If you are not already running Zotero, it is a must-have app for this school year. This week, both readwriteweb and globeandmail.com offered strong recommendations for making Zotero part of every student’s and scholar’s research toolbox.

On Monday, globeandmail.com posted a list of the apps they love, and Zotero was right at the top of the list. Then, on Wednesday readwriteweb recomended Zotero as part of its list of 10 Great Web Apps for College Students. As your friends, students, or colleagues settle in for the semester, consider helping them simplify their research lives by making sure they know about Zotero.

As the Zotero team diligently works on implementing a variety of exciting new features, we are proud to report that there are now over one hundred institutions recommending Zotero to their users. Some institutions, like MIT, have developed their own web tutorials on using Zotero, and others, like Rice University’s Fondren Library, are offering Zotero workshops for students and faculty. If we have missed your institution’s recommendation of Zotero or you would like help in developing a workshop or web tutorial for your users, please feel free to contact campus-reps[at}zotero.org. And if your institution does not yet recommend Zotero or offer Zotero instruction, please consider sending a note about how much you love Zotero to your favorite librarian or IT staff member.

We are excited to announce the launch of Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview, which introduces a powerful slate of new features, including:

• Automatic synchronization of collections among multiple computers. For example, sync your PC at work with your Mac laptop and your Linux desktop at home.
• Free automatic backup of your library data on Zotero’s servers.
• Support for thousands of existing Endnote’s export styles. While the CSL styles utilized by Zotero are a much more robust and powerful long-term solution for styling references, we are happy to offer users the ability to use Endnote styles where there are currently no available CSLs.
• A new style manager allowing you to add and delete CSLs and legacy style formats.
• Preliminary support for local sharing of collections through ZeroConf on OS X. Other platforms and full support to come with the final release of Zotero 1.5.

This major milestone for the project requires Firefox 3, so before you try it out be sure to upgrade Firefox as well.