Goodbye research log -- hello Zotero

After reading this and other articles on the uses of Zotero, I downloaded it and I'm now trying it out.

Goodbye research log -- hello Zotero — The Golden Egg Genealogist:

Zotero, a robust and free bibliographic and note-taking software package, gives me everything I ever needed from a research log and so much more. Here’s what I love about Zotero as my new notebook:

• It can serve as the storage location for all my notes, with links to all my PDF scans (because photocopies and file boxes are yesterday’s trauma).

• It allows me to organize this information in multiple ways simultaneously — by ancestor, by status of completion, by library, by whatever, without duplicating anything.

• It guides me in creating a bibliographic source, and I only do it once.

• It allows me to search across a large database in an instant.

• It provides access to everything, anywhere I have the Internet.

• It backs itself up.

And for those who want to see their research in date order, it keeps track of the day I created the reference and the day I last modified it. And if it really matters to me to know the exact date I extracted a piece of information, and the above two dates don’t satisfy me, I can type it in the note. (Though I have never needed to know that.)

Zotero seems to do quite a lot of things. It does one thing that Evernote used to do, but no longer does -- it syncs data on two computers (or more) though a remote server at zotero.org.[1] You can download a free copy from Zotero.org and try it out yourself.

Its main use, however, seems to be managing bibliographies, which is a more specialised task than note-taking programs like Evernote or OneNote. I actually found askSam more useful, even though it doesn't sync, because it allows both structured and unstructured data in the same file.  To sync I just use a flash drive and a batch file to copy data from one computer to the other. For more on those programs see Genealogy notes and news: Using Evernote, OneNote and askSam for genealogy.

I've barely scratched the surface of Zotero, but if you are doing any kind of research that requires a bibliography and bibliographical citations, have a look at it. It's free, so you lose nothing if it doesn't work for you.

One of the things that impressed me about Zotero is the ease with which you can populate your bibliography. For one thing, you can type in the ISBN of a book, and it will find the rest of the information. It will also grab bibliographical information from sites like Amazon.com, though it doesn't seem to work too well with GoodReads -- it gets some of the information, but not all, and records it as a web page rather than as a book.
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Notes and references
[1] Evernote may still sync for all I know, but it doesn't seem to work anymore for my desktop computer, which runs Windows XP, which, as all sorts of messages keep telling me, "is no longer supported". Now I know computer businesses need to make mopney and need to pay their staff and planned obsolescence is a tried and tested way of getting repeat business. But I'm a pensioner, and I can't afford to buy a new computer every couple of years, and a new operating system to go with it. So I just have to make do with what I have and hope that it lasts for the rest of my life. That's one reason that I don't use Ancestry.com -- not only can't I afford the subscription, but my browser is no longer supported, and if I want to update it I'm told my operating system is no longer supported.

Can HistoryLines Really Build an Instant Personal History of Your Ancestors?

when I read this, I was rather sceptical, and thought it was one ofn those "too good to be true" things Can HistoryLines Really Build an Instant Personal History of Your Ancestors?:

The HistoryLines website bills itself as “Instant Personal History.” Those of us who love family history get really excited when we think we can get a lot of valuable information quick and easy. So at first glance HistoryLines can seem a little disappointing. Instant personal history may be overselling it. But, like any good tool, the more you put into it the more you get out. And on second glance, HistoryLines is a good tool.

But since they offered a free trial, I thought I'd have a look, and, as I suspected, it offered a time line and some boilerplate text.

The first one I chose was my great great grandfather John Bagot Cottam (1836-1911). He was born in Salford, Lancashire, England, and emigrated to Natal in 1863, with his wife Adelaide Herbert (1831-1909) and three daughters. They had more daughters in Durban where he died in 1911.

Now it's possible that the paid-for version offers a bit more, but the free version asks for the first name and surname, date and place of birth and death, and sex of the person and that's all. If it asked for a couple of residence dates and places, or an emigration date and place, it might have been able to come up with more relevant boilerplate information, but it didn't.

It did have the First and Second Anglo-Boer Wars, but failed to mention the Union of South Africa in 1910. It also failed to mention the American Civil War. But why should it, if he was born in England and died in South Africa and was never in the USA?

In the case of John Bagot Cottam, however, that was probably a relevant fact. He emigrated to Natal in 1863 to be accountant to the Natal Cotton Plantation Company. Cotton planting never took off in Natal, but in 1863 the cotton mills of Manchester were desperately looking for alternative sources of raw cotton, since the US Civil War had made the American supply dry up.

If HistoryLines had come up with something like that, I might have seriously considered paying for it. But one can probably get more relevant results by doing your own Google searches using the dates in your family member's time line.

The second test was not a direct ancestor, but a relation who lived in the USA. I thought that as HistoryLines was an American project, it might do better with people in the US, so I thought that to be fair I should try one.

The one I chose was William Nelson Growden (1893-1979). He was born in Tennessee, died in Los Angeles, but spent most of his adult life in Alaska. He lived in Ruby, Alaska, and was in government service, and was at one time a member of the Alaska Territorial House of Representatives.

Again, perhaps if HistoryLines had correlated residence information it might have come up with more relevant boilerplate text, but as it was it did not mention the earthquake and tsunami in Valdez, Alaska, in 1964, which killed William Nelson Growden's youngest son and two of his grandchildren.

So no, though it sounds good in the blurb, I'm not tempted by this one.