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Robert W. Gehl
@rwg@aoir.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago

Latest FOSS Academic post is live!

https://fossacademic.tech/2025/08/19/zotero-zettlr.html

It's a note about the relative strengths and weaknesses of using #Zettlr and #Zotero for note-taking and writing. Spoiler: I thought I would use Zotero less and less, but I find myself using it just as much as I ever have.

[Replies to this will appear as comments on the blog unless you set privacy to Followers-only or DM. CWs will work]

#FOSSAcademic

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William Denton
@wdenton@cosocial.ca replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@rwg Thanks! Zettlr's new to me, and I'll check it out. I'm an Emacs person, but I'm always on the lookout for free and open systems to recommend to students.

A small correction: Zotero uses SQLite, not MySQL.

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Robert W. Gehl
@rwg@aoir.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@wdenton oof, you're right about SQLite!

I definitely definitely definitely recommend Zotero to students. I teach it regularly. I'm not sure many of them take me up on the idea (particularly undergrads).

As for Emacs, I took one look and got super confused. I think I grew up with too many GUIs...

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William Denton
@wdenton@cosocial.ca replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@rwg I'm glad to hear that about Zotero. I'm doing a bunch of workshops on it in the fall term—when they're in the library calendar system I'll send you a link in case you want to tell your students. They'll duplicate some or all of what you do, but maybe some students will just need that extra encouragement.
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Robert W. Gehl
@rwg@aoir.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@wdenton no, please do send them along! I don't think I spend enough time on it, to be honest. A workshop probably would give them a deeper dive.
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David Adler
@perspektivbrocken@social.tchncs.de replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@rwg I kind of used it in a similar fashion. As I used LaTeX for writing with Bibdesk instead of Zotero though (even though I also use Zotero based on the Bibtex document, when I am writing in LibreOffice or Word).

Bibdesk for summeries and notes on the text only.
@zettlr for own thought or synthesizing between multiple references.

In this case I also find it quite convenient to have included my Bibtex file in Zettlr, so I can easily refer to articles or books from within my Zettlr notes.

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Robert W. Gehl
@rwg@aoir.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@perspektivbrocken @zettlr Yeah, this sounds really similar. There's a place for citation-specific analysis, a space for middle-stage synthesis, and a space for writing it up/presenting it to others.
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