[lit-ideas] Re: Zotero?
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:35:16 -0800
John McCreery wroe
To me, personally, the big problem is the one mentioned at the end of
the article. Zotero and its competitors assume an academic with a
university affiliation and access to university libraries or,
alternatively, pockets deep enough to buy personal subscriptions to
JSTOR or other similar services.
John is right from what I've seen. I have access to the Reed library,
which allows me to use JSTOR and a zillion other collections of all
sorts of information, far more than I'll ever need or use—I mean ever.
I just finished watching the Zotero demo. Two things: first, it's a
wonder some of us ever survived college with only pencils, notebooks,
and library catalogues made up of little cards arranged in alphabetical
order. Second, it became clear to me midway through the demo that Zotero
would be of absolutely no use unless you were already so organized you
didn't need it.
Imagine ordering your groceries online by first classifying the things
you wanted under various headings (food, cleaning supplies, paper goods,
etc.), then searching under FOOD e.g. for fruits, vegetables, meats,
condiments, sauces, frozen foods, and then, if e. g. it's fruit you
want, sorting through various categories—organic, local, dactylic,
monotonic, Cartesian, traditional, trendy—and THEN saving the results on
a virtual shopping list that you can print out and take with you to the
store.
If such a site were designed along the lines of Mac OSX, it would ask,
after every choice, if you were sure you wanted to buy seedless grapes,
before putting them in your 'shopping cart.'
Robert Paul,
born 50 years too soon
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