I have been aware of the Center for History and New Media for quite some time (even posted a link here), but only recently did I take a look at their site beyond the work they do with Zotero.  I was surprised, in a very good way, at all of the resources they have available:

• Zotero – One of the best Firefox add-ons available, this should be taught to every college freshman as an aid to research.
• Omeka – Designed as a platform to create online exhibits and collections, this tool appears to be a great option for digital collection projects.
• ScholarPress – A collection of WordPress add-ons geared towards educational use, including Courseware, which offers an array of tools for instructors to connect with their students (although it would serve well for library instruction, I suspect).
• Syllabus Finder – Nearly two million syllabi can be searched and viewed through this site.
• ECHO – a directory of over 5,000 websites “concerning the history of science, technology, and industry.”

These are just a portion of the resources under their Research + Tools tab.  When you consider their offerings under the Teaching + Learning and Collecting + Exhibiting tabs as well, you can see that it would take hours to properly sample the useful items in this site.  Take some time to see what they can offer to help your projects.

Zotero 1.5 Beta has been released!

When I attended OneBigLibrary Unconference last summer, Trevor Owens gave a talk (un-talk?) on this version of Zotero and some of the new features and ideas that would be part of it (my post about it is here).  It has come to fruition, and it can change the way you do research (especially group research).  See the video for a great overview.

In addition,  Peter Murray (a.k.a. the Disruptive Library Technology Jester) has already set up a way to distribute your own Zotero citations via an RSS feed.  It is a great sign of success for a project like Zotero when people are creating mashups when your product is just a few days old.  Think of the ways that this could be used to promote library services, especially if your library software doesn’t do RSS.

Think of Middlespot as a Zotero-like organization tool for web searches.  Perform a search, and you have several ways to explore the search results, as well as saving collections of results in what they call a “Workpad”.

The fastest way to learn what this can do is to view their slideshow tutorial.  If you think it has potential, then don’t forget to check out their tools (including a way to incorporate Google search results into your workpad).

from MetaFilter