I tend to shake up my tech tools and apps when I want to procrastinate. Lately I’ve approached this a bit more maturely, explaining (lying) to myself that I’m trying out something new for a while in the hopes of simplifying my workflow. When I saw our library was offering Zotero free for students, I decided to give it a shot. I’ve been using Paperpile religiously for years and thought it might be good to see what else is out there.
Zotero’s interface, for some, is dated, but I found it endearing. For the last few months I’ve been adding RSS feeds and readings from my comp exams to see how I like its features. Overwhelmingly I loved the ability to mark sources as related to other sources – a big help with the films I’m viewing to see which articles I’ve read in relation to them (their titles are not always clear). What I really hated was their filing system and the inability to add it to my Google Drive without some headaches.
Ultimately, that and the need to be hardware independent was what made me come back fully to Paperpile. While I will miss the relation feature, I spent many years without it and since Paperpile doesn’t seem to be implementing something similar anytime soon, I’ll make it work.
Yeah, that’s it. Not really a review, just letting everyone know what I’m doing instead of reading and writing. 🙂
