His nickname “adamsmith” may ring a bell to Zotero community developers, political scientists, or anyone who has had citation style questions on the forums. Zotero interviews Sebastian Karcher and in doing so learns his motivation for authoring citation styles, translators, and why he chose the name of a famous Capitalist as the pseudonym for his open source work.

Name and Occupation:
Sebastian Karcher
Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, Northwestern University

How long have you been using Zotero?
Since late 2007 – I switched to Linux then and was looking for a new reference management system. I had used Biblioscape before, but I’ve never looked back.

What got you interested in developing for Zotero?
I really wasn’t initially – I’m not much of a programmer, to be honest. I first just wanted to learn to make simple changes to Zotero citation styles. I then got more involved in style development – which is really pretty basic and doesn’t require much coding experience. What kept me interested was, first, the possibility of learning new things – on the way I picked up on some shell scripting, using version control systems (like SVN and git), regular expressions, XPath, now some JavaScript. I would have never gotten myself to learn any of this without a specific purpose.

The other thing that motivates me is more political. I think it’s important to do our best to keep our tools and data free and open. To me Zotero is part of such an effort.

What development activities have you done so far for Zotero?
A lot of my work has been in style development – I’ve probably had some hand in about half of the ~370 independent styles in the Zotero style repository. We’re also thankfully getting more and more styles submitted by users; when a user posts a style for sharing I’ll usually be the one to briefly review it and then commit it to the csl repository. I also try to come by the forum a couple of times a day to see if there are any user questions I can answer.

More recently, I’ve been starting to work a little on Zotero translators, which has become much easier since Erik Hetzner wrote a framework that essentially reduces the task of writing a translator to identifying the relevant XPath.

Anything else you’d like to add? Cool things planned for the future?
As a political scientist I wanted to get translators for all important US magazines – a couple of them – like The New Yorker and Washington Monthly are already in the 2.1.8 version of Zotero, a couple of new ones – New Republic, Daily Beast, Foreign Policy, Slate – are in the queue – so that’s mostly done. I’m also interested in getting translators for more of the databases in Latin America, a region I do a lot of my work on.

On another note: People on the Forum often wonder about my username “adamsmith”; Why would the “Father of Capitalism” – Adam Smith – contribute to an open source project? The reason I’m so fond of Adam Smith is that he is so profoundly misunderstood. Smith actually believed that people were motivated not just by self interest, but also by “fellow feeling” – here’s one of my favorite quotes: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.” There is even an entire blog dedicated to debunking misconceptions about Smith, of which there are many.

If you follow Zotero on Twitter, Jason Puckett’s name may already be familiar to you. Below is our inaugural Spotlight interview with Jason, Zotero evangelist and author of a new book on Zotero published this month.

Name and Occupation:
Jason Puckett, Communication Librarian, Georgia State University.

How long have you been using Zotero?
For about five years now. I used to teach and use Endnote, but tried out Zotero while in library school and quickly became a convert.

How do you teach and promote Zotero?
Basically, I’m the point of first contact for anyone at GSU who needs help learning Zotero. I teach regular in-person workshops during the academic year. I usually include at least a brief Zotero segment in most of my regular course-based information literacy classes. I’ve taught online workshops using Elluminate and other presentation software, for GSU and as a guest speaker for other institutions. I’ve also taught a four-week online continuing education course for librarians for Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science, using Moodle.

What are some projects you’ve done using Zotero?
I’m the author of the new book Zotero: A Guide for Librarians, Researchers and Educators from ACRL Publications. It goes into the basic and advanced functionality of Zotero, and even has some information on including feeds in third party apps. Additionally, at GSU Library we recently used a Zotero group to allow several people to work together compiling a bibliography of faculty publications. I’m using it collaboratively to pool sources with an article co-author. And naturally, I’ve used it for every article, bibliography and publication list I’ve created in the last few years.

Anything planned for the future?
Nothing definite, aside from the paper I’m researching right now. I’m excited to see what happens as the new API allows Zotero to connect with other applications. I’m already trying out the Zotpress plugin on my WordPress site, and it’s working great so far. I’m thinking about a possible digital exhibit I’d like to put together this summer, partly inspired by the New Orleans Research Collaborative site, and I’d certainly use Zotero to build the bibliographies for that.

A new third-party plugin called Zotpress is now available. It runs on WordPress, the open source platform widely used for personal, professional and course websites and blogs. Zotpress was created by community member Katie Seaborn, and it allows you to pull and organize items from your or another Zotero library into your WordPress site. The plugin harnesses the power of Zotero’s server API by grabbing library data dynamically and presenting it outside Zotero.

So why would you use it? Zotpress is great for scholars or job hunters who want to easily organize their CVs or resumes on their personal websites. Teachers can use it as well to present bibliographies to students. Or, if you just want to share some stuff you’ve been reading or studying, you can use Zotpress for that, too. In short, Zotpress is useful because it expands on Zotero’s mission by offering a new and easy interface to share your data freely with the world.

Zotpress has already been downloaded over a thousand times, but please note that it is still under active development, which means you may run into some glitches that will soon be resolved. To download Zotpress or for more information, visit the WordPress plugin directory.

Cool new things have been brewing at Zotero in terms of outreach improvements. Here are two biggies:

1. Zotero Newsletter: Here’s a live link to the Zotero Newsletter sign-up form. The web-based newsletter, to be sent out periodically, will contain information on cool community projects, plugins, interviews and software updates. Subscribe and have Zotero news tidbits sent right to your email inbox!



2. Site Redesign: Zotero’s getting a Website overhaul. In order to make your Zotero experience the best it can be, the Zotero team would love to get feedback about what you like and what you’d like to see improved. Here is a redesign form (yes, we know, but it’ll be the last one, at least for a while!) that will help Zotero greatly in the fixing-up process. Note that not all site changes will be immediate, but rather will be rolling out continuously for the next couple of months.

Thanks in advance for your help, and thank you, as always, for supporting Zotero.

This week marks a significant transition for Zotero as we introduce Freemium Edition. It’s an important step that we hope you will see as an investment in Zotero, one that will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality research management software to scholars around the world and on any platform.

If you are a “home delivery” Zotero subscriber, you will continue to have full access to your references on your computer, and they will continue to arrive on your doorstep, as 3×5 cards, at your regularly scheduled delivery intervals: Hourly, Tuesdays, Solar Eclipses, or Arbor Day Only. If you are not a home delivery subscriber, you will have free access to up to twenty references. If you exceed that limit, you will be asked to become a Freemium subscriber. If your birthday falls in September or you are left-handed, you will be asked to pay twice.

Zotero is offering three Freemium Edition packages that allow you to choose from a variety of devices:

• $15 per month ($180 per year) will grant you access to zotero.org from up to five mobile devices, though the devices must only be used while physically in motion.


• $20 per month ($240 per year) will give you access to three mobile or stationary devices, and you’ll be able to use them while seated comfortably and on Thursdays.


• $35 per month ($420 per year) will let you access zotero.org from anywhere, including even the ratty old PC in your parents’ basement.

Non-subscribers will still be able to access up to twenty of their references each month. “We think with careful planning and succinct argumentation, cheapskate scholars will still be able to prepare a short journal article once or twice per year,” assured lead developer Dan Stillman.

Zotero breaks new ground with its innovative lunar billing cycle, which will charge users every 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes. Zotero Outreach Coordinator Debbie Maron explained, “Plato said that the forms resonate with the divine movement of the heavens, so scholarship should be billed similarly.”

The new pricing model is intended to address longstanding concerns about Zotero’s commercial viability. “We found that no matter how much we promoted Zotero’s award-winning features and dynamic developer community, potential adopters couldn’t wrap their heads around free software,” remarked Zotero co-director Dan Cohen. As he used a hundred dollar bill to light a cigar, Cohen added, “Time to get paid!”

In order to cement its advantage in providing the latest and best cutting-edge technology, Zotero will now also lead the pack in the most important category: cost. “How do I judge the quality of my Bentley or this caviar and foie gras hoagie?” asked co-director Sean Takats, peering through his monocle. “By the outrageous price, of course, and now we can finally do the same for Zotero.”

Faolan Cheslack-Postava could not be reached for comment, probably because he’s on his yacht.