We’re excited to reveal that the Zotero project has begun preliminary development of a standalone version of the research software that will interact with browsers other than Firefox. Code has already been committed to Zotero’s open-source repository that provides a glimpse of how this new version might work. This proof of concept is allowing our developers to study how best to integrate Zotero with other popular browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Of course, Firefox is still an excellent web browser, and we’re confident that it will remain so for years to come. That said, we also want to provide the Zotero community with the opportunity to use other software when they choose to do so, or when they face institutional barriers to using Firefox.

As always, Team Zotero has been hard at work rolling out dazzling new features designed with you, the harried researcher, squarely in mind. Today we’re delighted to announce the latest service aimed at dragging our interpersonally-challenged colleagues into the age of social networking. We give you ZoteroSquare.

The service works as follows: ZoteroSquare users “citat-in” in order to earn “badges” sure to inspire envy and admiration in tenure committees around the world. A few examples include:

Local: You’ve been at the same place (e.g. curled in the fetal position inside a library study carrel) 3x in one week!

Super User: That’s 30 citatins and nothing written in a month for you!

JetSetter: Hopping around the world one soul-crushing panel at a time… congrats on your 5th conference citatin and safe travels!

Bender: That’s 4+ years of graduate school for you!

Explorer: You’ve citatinated into 25 different twelve-step programs!

Asked for background on the inspiration for ZoteroSquare’s path-breaking innovation of citatins, Zotero Developer Fred Gibbs protested, “How are we supposed to pronounce that? Citation? Citating? That doesn’t even make any sense!” The stunning new functionality not only exploits Zotero’s millions of intelligent and lonely users, it also leverages the full extent of the software’s origins. “Few people know that Zotero is at its core powered purely by dating software,” revealed Dan Stillman, Zotero’s Lead Developer.

Zotero Web Developer Faolan Cheslack-Postava shrugged in disgust when asked for comment, but Community Lead Trevor Owens enthusiastically dubbed ZoteroSquare “the most depraved navel-gazing software since Dragon NaturallyTweeting.” Zotero Co-Director Sean Takats added that he had grown bored with providing researchers with useful tools and now simply wanted to cash in with premium services. According to Takats, Zotero’s future business model could hardly be more straightforward:

1. Add social networking features.
2. ???
3. Profit!

When confronted about the new feature’s striking similarity to the inexplicably popular service FourSquare, Zotero Co-Director Dan Cohen tersely asserted that he has been appending ”-Square” to the end of various words since at least 2001.

The first results of Zotero’s new storage offerings are in, and we’re delighted to announce that researchers around the world are eagerly joining the ranks of file-syncing Zoterons. Indeed, individuals and research labs located on every continent except Antarctica—we’re looking right at you, McMurdo—have already purchased upgrades for their storage accounts.

Zotero 2.0 offers users the ability not only to store unlimited libraries, tags, and notes, but also to synchronize to the cloud attached files like PDFs, images, audio, video, word-processing documents, or anything else related to research. These files can be synchronized in personal libraries and shared in collaborative group libraries. They are available to any other Zotero client, or even via Zotero’s web interface at http://zotero.org.

Each Zotero user has free access to up to 100 MB of storage, and users may also purchase additional storage space of 1 GB, 5 GB, 10 GB, or more for a very reasonable cost. Reflecting the established international popularity of Zotero and the hearty endorsement of overseas universities, well over half of all sales have been made to scholars outside the United States. To date, researchers from no fewer than 40 nations around the globe have already purchased upgrades, and we fully support purchasing from an additional 170 countries—hello, Greenland?

Adding Zotero storage not only provides you with a valuable service, it also helps to sustain the Zotero project, so please consider upgrading your account today!

We are thrilled to announce that the full release of Zotero 2.0 has now been made available to the entire Zotero community. This release of Zotero includes an expansive set of new features and we strongly encourage all our users to upgrade to Zotero 2.0 to benefit from those improvements as soon as possible. Below are some of the highlights of Zotero 2.0’s new functionality. (For a full list of new features, please see the changelog.) The new Zotero homepage also makes it easy to browse the major new features.

Syncing

Automatically sync your library of collections among multiple computers. For example, sync your PC at work with your Mac laptop and your Linux desktop at home.

This also provides you with free automatic backup of your library data on Zotero’s servers.

Storage

You can automatically synchronize your library’s attached files through Zotero file storage.

You can also share files with your colleagues through group file storage.

People

Zotero users get a personal page with a short biography and the ability to list their discipline and interests, create an online CV (simple to export to other sites), and grant access to their libraries.

Easily find others in one’s discipline or with similar research interests.

Follow other researchers–and be followed in return.

Groups

Create and join public and private groups on any topic.

Access in real time new research materials from your groups on the web or in the Zotero window.

Easily move materials from a group stream into your personal library.

Even More Functionality That Makes Your Life Easier

Automatic detection of PDF metadata (i.e., author, title, etc.).

Automatic detection and support for proxy servers.

Trash can with restore item functionality so you don’t accidentally lose important materials.

Notes now work as  rich-text.

A new style manager allowing you to add and delete CSLs and legacy style formats.

Zotero is now licensed under the GPLv3.

As we ring in the new year, we’re tremendously excited about the future of Zotero and the great things in store for 2010: bringing 2.0 out of beta, launching Zotero Commons with the Internet Archive, and introducing even more new features that will continue to make Zotero the most innovative and open platform for researchers. It’s hard to believe that since its modest launch in the fall of 2006, Zotero has been downloaded over four million times and is used worldwide in dozens of languages. Thousands of forum and blog posts and news articles demonstrate that scholars love using an open-source research platform that outclasses commercial alternatives, new and old.

One important part of the future of Zotero is its plan for sustainability. Zotero has been supported by generous grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and was conceived during work on a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. All of these funders encouraged Zotero—as they do with all grantees—to envision a path from dependency on particular funders to a varied and sustainable support base, and so we have been planning for years for models to underwrite the project (including continuing to pursue grants to create new features and to assist underserved markets).

Some in the Zotero community may have recently seen that the Mellon program which funded Zotero, Research in Information Technology, has recently been folded into the Scholarly Communications program at the foundation. They may have wondered if this news might signal trouble for Zotero. Not at all. The Center for History and New Media, where Zotero is based, continues to enjoy an active and productive relationship with the Mellon Foundation, and indeed is still completing work under a Mellon grant for our collaboration with the Internet Archive.

More important, we have already begun to diversify the sources of support for Zotero, precisely in the way that the Mellon Foundation and others have encouraged us. We will soon write more about one major initiative, the Corporation for Digital Scholarship (CDS), a non-profit organization that sharp-eyed users have noticed provides Zotero’s new cloud storage. CDS will work to sustain Zotero and other open-source projects that serve scholars.

In short, as we have for nearly four years, we will continue in 2010 to pursue our overall ambitious goals for the Zotero Project, including its sustainability. We’re looking forward to the new year, and we thank the Zotero community for how far we’ve already come together.