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.

School is back in session and the results are in. If you are not already running Zotero, it is a must-have app for this school year. This week, both readwriteweb and globeandmail.com offered strong recommendations for making Zotero part of every student’s and scholar’s research toolbox.

On Monday, globeandmail.com posted a list of the apps they love, and Zotero was right at the top of the list. Then, on Wednesday readwriteweb recomended Zotero as part of its list of 10 Great Web Apps for College Students. As your friends, students, or colleagues settle in for the semester, consider helping them simplify their research lives by making sure they know about Zotero.

As the Zotero team diligently works on implementing a variety of exciting new features, we are proud to report that there are now over one hundred institutions recommending Zotero to their users. Some institutions, like MIT, have developed their own web tutorials on using Zotero, and others, like Rice University’s Fondren Library, are offering Zotero workshops for students and faculty. If we have missed your institution’s recommendation of Zotero or you would like help in developing a workshop or web tutorial for your users, please feel free to contact campus-reps[at}zotero.org. And if your institution does not yet recommend Zotero or offer Zotero instruction, please consider sending a note about how much you love Zotero to your favorite librarian or IT staff member.