Someone asked me which bibliographic tool I would recommend and I commented that each had different features, so as long as you could port data, you could use whatever combination you wanted.
Then I wondered what our Penn State Zotero whiz Ellysa Cahoy would think, and it turned out I was on the right track. Zotero has the ease of use and the ability to grab metadata off the Web, Ref Works some collaboration features and EndNote every citation style you could ever need. Glad to see that I was on the right track.
Update – Ellysa’s post was for the 2008 Symposium. Zotero has just realeased a beta for a Web version.
What Ellysa’s post reminded me was how much data porting is involved in our professional lives. Researchers port citations, graphic artists use multiple programs ranging from Photoshop to Flash, and writers need to know both Word and CMS Management sytems (at Penn State, 3-4 at least).
I think this situation is a good example of why porting data is a good strategy – it’s really hard to imagine on piece of software with the capability of all 3 that would still be usable.