Zotero, Amen!

Word on the street is that something on the order of a quarter millionpeople have tuned in to Zotero, the amazing new online digitalorganizing, aggregating, and annotating tool that is designed byhumanists for everyone, but with the special citation practices and digital needs ofcontemporary humanists in mind. Even the examples in the tutorial are good, theoretically engaged, connected to contemporary critical practice. Hats off to the great team at George Mason University and to Dan Cohen, Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Art Historyand Associate Director and Director of Research Projects, Center forHistory and New Media at George Mason University. He's our hero! Sometimes people complain that no one is interested in so-called "digital humanities." (I wish we could just say "humanities," for pete's sakes; no one would say "digital microbiology" because the biologists were using computers in their work). Well, as Zotero's success and the massive interest in our Digital Media and Learning Competition attest, just about everyone is interested when the projects truly intersect with what it is that drives humanists. David (i.e. David Theo Goldberg, my collaborator on things HASTAC) and I keep saying that the humanities are foundational to the salient issues and implications of the information age and we need tools as visionary as that. Zotero, like the work from the Institute for the Future of the Book, is all that. HASTAC herewith offers its official seal of approval. \*__*/ [for those who haven't read my earlier blog on this, this is the Japanese emoticom for the smiley face . . . who knew emoticoms need translation, too?]

Check it out! Here are some urls:

Zotero: http://www.zotero.org/

Institute for the Future http://www.futureofthebook.org/