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Advanced tips to get the most out of Zotero

Friday, June 13th, 2014

In a previous post told you more about Zotero, a powerful referencing tool. This time around, we’ll  give you a few advanced tips to get the most out of it.

GENERAL

  1. If you normally browse the internet with a browser other than Firefox (e.g. Google Chrome or Internet Explorer), it works great to use Firefox as a “research-only” browser. Disable all unnecessary add-ons and plugins and add quick links to your favourite research websites in your bookmarks toolbar. That way, when you open Firefox you’ll be able to research efficiently without distractions.

COLLECTING SOURCES

  1. If you’re browsing Google Scholar, JSTOR or something similar and both the address bar icon and the “Export” link are shown for a particular item, rather use the latter. In some cases, Zotero can’t extract the complete metadata for the item when it tries to do so automagically. In these (rare) cases, the metadata provided by the vendor (Google Scholar, JSTOR, etc.) is more accurate and so it makes more sense to use the “Export” link.
  2. Learn how to use ZotFile. This nifty Zotero add-on will allow you to store full-text PDFs of your journal articles on your hard drive. It will also allow you to send these PDFs to your tablet, letting you annotate them using your favourite PDF app. Afterwards, it pulls the annotated PDFs back into your library. This is brilliant for jotting down thoughts while you’re reading an article.

ORGANISING SOURCES

  1. The easiest way to organise your sources is by using collections. However, tags are also very handy for adding ‘statuses’ to your sources. For example, you could decide to add the tag “Started” to all the sources you’ve started reading for a particular project. When you’re finished with a particular source you could add the tag “Finished”. Also, you could indicate the quality of a source by using a tag, for example by adding tags like “Not applicable” and “Awesome”. Check out this article for help on using collections and tags.

CITING IN A DOCUMENT

  1. You can create your own citation style if, heaven forbid, none of the existing ones fits your needs. Be warned, though, that this requires a bit of technical knowledge.
  2. In Microsoft Word, create keyboard shortcuts for inserting a citation and editing a citation. This will make it even easier to insert citations while you type (literally reducing the time required to insert a citation to a few seconds). For example, you could assign CTRL+ALT+D to inserting a citation and CTRL+ALT+E to editing a citation.
LAST NOTE

The chances are that, once you start using Zotero, you will find it hard to remember how you did research without it. Apart from the short-term advantages set out above, using Zotero has the long-term advantage of letting you gradually build your own research library, ensuring a level of continuity across your different essays/articles/papers.

In conclusion, and to summarise: Zotero handles the nitty-gritty practicalities of research, letting you concentrate fully on what matters most: interpreting existing knowledge and contributing your own.

[ARTICLE BY JOHANNES JONKER]

 

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Struggle to manage postgrads?

Friday, June 6th, 2014

Two weeks ago we introduced you to NAO (Postgraduate Academic Support), a web based system to help you manage postgraduate student information without too much effort.

The following questions are most often asked by staff members who are already putting NAO to good use:

  1. Why is NAO not available via my.sun.ac.za?  I am forever losing the link sent to me!
  2. Could someone please wave a magic wand and get rid of all the forms we have to complete and replace them with pre-populated ones?
  3. Could we please be notified when new functionalities are implemented in the NAO system? 

The good news is that both questions 1 and 2 will receive attention next semester and we have a solution to the problem in question 3 already.  Bits & Bytes and the  blog will be used to make information about NAO available to staff members.

As far as question 1 is concerned, a workflow process is envisaged for staff members to receive permission from their line managers to use NAO.  The reason behind the strict access is that sensitive information, necessary for the management of postgraduate students, is available via the system and your line manager knows whether you should have access or not. 

The SU auditors would need to be in the know about the outcome of the authorisation process to decide whether legislation regarding the privacy of individuals’ personal information, is complied with. They also need to know who has access and who gave permission. 

As soon as the authorisation process becomes available, staff members would be able to apply for access to NAO via my.sun.ac.za and be assigned a specific Role within the system on the basis of answers given to questions and agreed on by the line manager. 

Question 2 has been under discussion for a long time.  At the moment, much thought is given to generic forms generated and pre-populated by NAO for various purposes e.g. nomination of M and PhD candidates, nomination of Study Leaders/Supervisors and numerous other examples, which could be used by all Faculties and Departments. 

The information collected by the forms of different Faculties correspond 95% and the idea is to add the other 5% as optional extras for staff members to fill in if their areas require the information. 

Maybe the best way to get people interested in generic forms, is to gradually add prototypes to NAO and wait for users of the system to respond.  It is virtually impossible to involve  everybody personally and it is easier to comment on something more tangible than an idea. 

 We’d like to invite you to leave us comments, ideas and suggestions on this on this blog post or contact Rita de Jager. 

[ARTICLE BY:  Rita de Jager (Head: Postgraduate Academic Support, Information Technology, SU]

 

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Zotero: step by step

Friday, June 6th, 2014

In a previous post we introduced you to Zotero, a powerful referencing tool. This time around, we’ll  show you how it works.

COLLECTING RESOURCES

There’s a cool screencast showing all of the below, as well as a great guide.

Zotero’s first ‘killer’ feature is the fact that it makes it much quicker and easier to accurately collect information about your sources. In most cases, you can grab all of the information required for a citation (e.g. title, date, publisher and place, in the case of a book) in a single click, while you are viewing the specific item on your preferred research/library website (e.g. Google Scholar, JSTOR, EBSCOHost). There are four ways to collect sources:

  1. Use the icon in the address bar. On most websites, Zotero will add an icon to the right-hand side of the top address bar. When clicking that icon, Zotero will automagically grab the metadata of the item you’re currently viewing (e.g. a book on Google Books, a journal article on JSTOR, etc.) and create a new item in your library.
  2. Use your research/library website’s “Export” function. Most research websites will have an “Export” link somewhere on the page. Zotero will happily create a new item in your library when you click that link. This is especially handy when you’re viewing search results on a website like Google Scholar, because you’ll be able to add many sources very quickly (i.e. when you’re grouping everything that looks interesting to look at it at a later stage).
  3. Enter a book’s ISBN. If you work with printed books, you’re probably used to flipping to the front matter of the book and trying to decipher the fine print for details such as the publisher, place and year of publication. In this case, Zotero’s magic is particularly spectacular. Simply click the ‘magic wand’ tool in Zotero, enter the book’s ISBN and press ENTER. Nearly instantaneously, Zotero will contact a number of worldwide ISBN services, get the correct metadata for your book and create a new item in your library.
  4. Manually create a new item. In the very rare case that none of the above three methods is available, you can create a new item and enter its details by hand (read: keyboard).

CITING YOUR SOURCES AND GENERATING A BIBLIOGRAPHY

Once you’ve collected all of your sources in your Zotero library, you can start citing them in Microsoft Word (and other word processor) documents. This is Zotero’s second ‘killer’ feature: that it does all of the style formatting dirty work behind the screens. You simply position your cursor where you want to add a citation, go to the “Add-ins” tab in Word and click the “Insert Citation” icon. This will bring up an inviting, red-bordered textbox, in which you can type the title/author of your source(s). Pressing ENTER will add a neat citation in your preferred style. On that note: there are more than 6000 styles available for download from the Zotero website.

Many students will know the sinking feeling of having finished the actual writing of their paper/report/thesis, only to remember that the bibliography is still conspicuously absent. Here, Zotero’s third ‘killer’ feature kicks in: it keeps track of what you’ve cited in your document and generates a complete bibliography, in your selected style, at the click of a button.

Check out this page for a full guide to citing and generating a bibliography with Zotero.

Next time – Advanced tips to get the most out of Zotero.

[ARTICLE BY JOHANNES JONKER]

 

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Easy referencing with Zotero

Friday, May 23rd, 2014

It’s safe to say that every university student will write at least one written piece (essay, report, etc.) requiring referencing during his/her time as student. It’s also safe to say that mentioning the word “referencing” to most of these students will, at the very least, make their smiles drop or, in a worst-case scenario, lead to them running away, screaming and wildly swinging their arms in the air.

This is quite understandable.

Manual referencing – keeping track of your sources, making sure you have the correct information on them and, finally, citing them in the right places in the right style – is a horrid experience. It’s mundane, laborious and very time-consuming. While many facets of doing research have evolved tremendously over the past decades, it’s rather curious that a simple and easy solution to this persistent problem has not yet been developed.[1]

That is, of course, until the advent of Zotero. In the following sections we’ll look briefly at how Zotero works in an effort to show why some consider it to be the best thing since sliced bread.

What is Zotero and how do I get it?

Zotero is a free, open source software package that you can install on your PC, Mac or Linux-based computer. It runs as an “add-on” within the Mozilla Firefox browser (which is also free and open source) and integrates deeply with your referencing process, greatly simplifying all of its steps: collecting sources, keeping them organised and citing them – in the correct style – in your paper, essay or report.

To install Zotero, make sure you have Firefox installed. If not, first download Firefox. Open Firefox. Then go to this page and click the “Zotero for Firefox” button.[2]

In our next edition we’ll have a closer look at how Zotero works and give you some advanced tips on how to get the most out of your Zotero.

[1] To be fair, a number of referencing software packages have been available for a considerable time. However, none of them have made the referencing experience truly frictionless to the extent that Zotero does.

[2] Zotero is also available as a standalone package (i.e. outside the Firefox browser), but it’s much easier to use within the Firefox browser.

 

[ARTICLE BY JOHANNES JONKER]

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Easily manage your postgraduate students’ information

Friday, May 23rd, 2014

Managing postgraduate students is a lot of work, but NAO can help you.  Have you ever wished that information about postgraduate students of your Faculty or Department was more readily available?  If you have never used NAO before, now is the time to to find out more and save yourself a lot of trouble in future.

The following remarks have been made about the system and you can decide for yourself whether they sound promising or not:

“Why haven’t I heard about the system before … grrrr.”
“NAO is the best thing that has happened in my career during the past few years!”
“Wow! Now I never have to hunt for a student number again … “

NAO is the abbreviation for Nagraadse Akademiese Ondersteuning/Postgraduate Academic Support; a web-based system designed specifically for staff members involved with the management of postgraduate students.

Honestly, you can get rid of the spreadsheets you have used year after year to keep track of important information, because everything you need is  available via NAO, fresh from the central system every single morning.

Below is a list of various types of information available to make your life a bit easier:

  • Undergraduate final year students (for recruitment purposes)
  • Applicants from elsewhere – see how far the applications have progressed
  • Registered postgraduate students
  • Postgraduate students not registered yet
  • Lists of graduates form previous years
  • Historic information as far back as 2000 

Excel reports are available with as little effort as a mouse click, to enable you to do further data crunching,  filter options will narrow down your searches to only the records you are interested in and data on the screen can be sorted by clicking column headings.

At a glance and without lifting a finger the system shows whether a student

  • is from abroad as well as his/her nationality,
  • is currently being funded or has received funding in the past,
  • already has a study leader and / or thesis title captured to the central system,
  • has passed away and
  • information such as SU number, nickname, surname, programme, anchor module, email address, telephone number and much more is also immediately available. 

Something extra about the system worth mentioning, is that e-mails can be sent to groups of students.  Just create your own wording in both English and Afrikaans and e-mails will be sent to students in the correspondence language which they have chosen at registration. The same wording can be used year after year, for example to remind slowcoaches to register before a certain date to avoid paying a fine!

You will be able to create your own notes per student (e.g. John was out of action for a certain time as a result of influenza), get access to full study records, check funding to make sure departmental bursaries were awarded and get hold of lots more information.

The best news of all is that Study Leaders and Thesis Titles can be captured to the central system via NAO, which will spare you a lot of worrying about your hard drive crashing and destroying all your hard work of the past 6 months!

If you need more information, click here to see a Powerpoint presentation. Send email to Rita de Jager, Head: Postgraduate Academic Support at rd@sun.ac.za to be given access, scheduled for a training session or to ask further questions about NAO.

[Article by Rita de Jager with much appreciated input from prof Keith Palmer, Dept of E & E Engineering]

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