As the Zotero development community diligently refines Zotero 1.5, we are also starting to break ground on the new Zotero website. To whet your appetite, here is a small taste of what’s to come.

Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview users can now take advantage of preliminary read access to their synced collections from any web browser on any computer, including a version formatted for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. The image to the right is a screenshot of browsing a collection on an iPhone. Just think of the possibilities!

To try this out, you will need to have synced your Zotero 1.5 library to the Zotero server. Then simply visit https://beta.zotero.org and log in to view your library.

We are excited to announce that the Institute of Museum and Library Services is funding a new million dollar project developed in partnership between the University of Michigan School of Information and the Center for History and New Media. A team at the University of Michigan’s School of Information will build Bibliobouts, a game which uses Zotero data to create a game targeted at engendering information literacy.

The Bibliobouts project is another powerful example of how Zotero has become a powerful platform for major grant-funded research projects and innovation. Like Vertov, Bibliobouts demonstrates the way in which Zotero is becoming a foundational element in academic cyberinfrastructure.

As the launch of Zotero 1.5 approaches we are excited to announce the availability of specific bibliographic styles for more than 1100 journals. Zotero now supports such diverse publications as French Historical Studies, the American Sociological Review, Accounts of Chemical Research, the Chinese Journal of Clinical Oncology, the British Medical Journal, American Political Science Review, and Oxford German Studies. We also remind Zotero users that most other publications are already supported through our generic styles.

Note: These new styles require Zotero 1.5, which is currently available as a Preview and will be available for general release in October.

We are excited to announce the release of the second Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview. Among the exciting improvements in 1.5 SP2 you will find:

Attachment syncing: All attached files can now be synced via a user’s own WebDAV server (e.g. iDisk, Jungle Disk, university-provided web storage). Although some work remains to be done on attachment syncing, it’s working great now, and we’re ready for feedback from the community.

Automatic proxy support: This release automatically detects most major university proxy systems and seamlessly proxies URLs.

Retrieve Metadata from PDFs: Zotero can now retrieve metadata for your stray PDFs. See this feature in action in this screencast.