Sunday, August 31, 2008

Canadianization of Zotero: Results

In June, I sent out a request for suggestions of databases useful to Canadian historians. My goal was to make Zotero - a citation management program designed for use on the internet - friendlier for Canadian history researchers.

A tool like Zotero is only good if it works when you need it to. By extending it's capabilities to include more Canadian content, Canadian researchers now have more incentive to move away form expensive or subscription software that can grab citations from a limited number of databases.

Thank you to everyone who made suggestions and told me about the databases they use regularly.

Zotero now has more translators dedicated to Canadian sites than any other country outside the US.

My focus was on making translators for archives, journal repositories newspapers and university libraries. The results of my Canadianization is as follows:

National Archives and Archival networks:

Archives Canada (archivescanada.ca)
BCAIN
Archives Network of Alberta
Saskatchewan AIN
Manitoba AIN
Archeion
Bibliotheque et Archives Nationales Quebec
PEI AIN

Databases and Repositories:

Artefacts Canada
Archives Canada-France
Canadiana.org
Champlain Society
Civilization.ca
Canadian Letters and Images Project
Glenbow Museum
AdvoCAT - Great Library Catalogue
CARL Harvester
Eighteenth Century Collections Online

Newspapers:

The Globe and Mail
The National Post
The Toronto Star
Le Devoir
The Hamilton Spectator
Winnipeg Free press
All newspapers hosted on Canada.com
All newspapers hosted on Cyberpresse.ca

University Libraries:

UBC Library
UQAM Library

* note: most Canadian university library systems were already supported by Zotero. Zotero now supports 90% of Canadian university libraries.

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Anyone using Zotero can now automatically grab citation information for anything from fonds, to journal articles to artifacts on these Canadian content sites and dozens of others that are already supported. Go forth and research!

Thank you to the Center for History and New Media for funding this project.