You need to dig into the preferences of Zotero and the relevant plugin to enter your username and password. But you will need an account so you can use the Zotero plug-in for other browsers. This means your database is up to Zotero and even synchronised with another copy of Zotero if you have two computers.
At this point you will most likely to need to register an account at Zotero, which is also free and painless. Otherwise you can install it as a standalone (which I do). If you are a Firefox user then you are in luck as it integrates best with Firefox as a plugin. Clicking this drops the resource straight into Zotero! If there are multiple sources you get to pick which. If you are searching for Journals, books (Amazon) or even what to source the webpage you are reading there is a small blue book icon that appears. The best bit comes when you are browsing the web. If it gets it wrong you can change the data too. If you know the ISBN of a book for example you can type it in and, poof, it searches for the data and plops the entry in Zotero. I enjoy getting sources into it the most. Did I mention it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux and was free? (Oh yes and on Google Docs too – see this article for more info) It also dumps the bibliography in the right place too, and keeps it in alphabetically sorted, AND it formats each entry and citation perfectly according to the MHRA style (or any other it supports). It comes with plugins and exports that make sticking the references into the proper places in your essay very simple. Then you can create smaller folders (mini-bibliographies) with the sources you are using for different essays. This means it is a database you can put books (and any other resource – webpages, journals, pdf’s etc.), you can even make notes in it. I think I have found an amazing (and FREE) tool and I wanted to share it with you.
So as computers are supposed to make our lives easier I searched about for some software to help. I am a student again for the next three years and amidst the general perks of student life (leaving dirty dishes in the sink, book buying and NUS card discounts) there is the downside of having to write essays of which the worst part is writing bibliographies and formatting them correctly. Worse yet we need to use the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) style to format them, which is not the easiest style. Zotero running with several collections on the left
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