In part 1 of this test, where I try to do my daily tasks as a historian accompanied by Zotero rather than Endnote, I got the software going: imported my database from Endnote, managed to hook Zotero up to Word and so on.
Just a quick report of what’s happened since then. Basically, there’s not much to report, Zotero just works, more or less, which of course is high praise for Zotero. Software that doesn’t get in our way and just does what it is supposed to do is what we want. I have been able to import references with Zotero’s one-click method from most of the bibliographic sites I work with. Compared to Endnote’s way of getting stuff automatically into its database, this is a bit easier. I have been able to install Endnote output styles, as well.
One problem encountered is how to enter this reference in Zotero:
Richard Yeo, “Science and Intellectual Authority in mid-nineteenth-century Britain: Robert Chambers and Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation“, Victorian Studies vol. 27 (1984), 5-31.
The problematic part is, of course, the title in italics in the title of the paper. Entering it in Endnote, I would simply highlight the text and apple-i (is ctrl-i the Windows equivalent? - I switched to Mac some six years ago and memory fails me on this one); the italics would then become part of the post and show up properly in Word. Apple-i is something completely different in Firefox (and doing it in html doesn’t seem to work). Fixing it in Word works - until Zotero refresh the references in the document and the italics disappear …
(My setup: Firefox 3.0.1, Word 2004/Mac, Zotero 1.5 synch preview.)
