"Metadata is not perfectly or consistently applied" should be a T-shirt
The key for reference managers is that if you actually are going to cite something, check your metadata fields, and then check your generated bibliography after. Otherwise, it's great for saving and organizing your TBR.
However, I do all my mss bib entries by hand bc Zotero doesn't handle that well!
My contribution to Zotero discourse:
1. Thank you to the W&M librarian that introduced me to reference managers as a sophomore
2. SHARP Bibs for the last 3 years would be way harder w/o Zotero
3. If you wanna learn Zotero, this libguide is great!
guides.libraries.indiana.edu/c.php?g=199575
I have 15 yrs of my research interests in zotero. I always tell the students "this may not work for you but you should try it". I lost all my notecards with my citations every time so Z was a huge win.
I'd rather they use a citation manager than pull made-up citations off Chatgpt or whatever
I know the discourse is over and I already weighed in elsewhere but it is actually important to me that y’all know that Zotero isn’t AI. It just isn’t, even under an expansive definition.
If a citation generated with Zotero is wrong, it’s because the metadata was incorrect, 100% of the time. Zotero isn’t doing any predictive work, it is just plugging in what it has with where that information goes. Metadata is not perfectly or consistently applied!