When I started my doctoral project in 2009 I did not use any sort of reference management tools. Instead I had elaborate, unwieldy Word Documents that got messier and messier with each chapter. My dissertation, “Homeliness and Worldliness: Materiality and the Making of New Netherland and New York, 1609-1750” critically investigated the intersecting topics of domestic interiors, women’s history, cultural production and global consumption to explore how Dutch colonial projects intellectually imagined and physically built homes overseas.

Needless to say, I wish I would have known then what I know now about reference management tools. In the hour that I have been using it Zotero has proved to be a relatively easy to use, and efficient tool for helping me cite my sources.

See attached for a short paragraph I wrote and cited using my new found Zotero tools!