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Literature management programs allow you to collect, organize, reuse, and share literature. The 4 most popular programs at the UZH are Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote and Citavi. Each program has certain specifications, which are presented here.
Zotero
This program is free of charge and is particularly suitable for people who work a lot with library catalogues. Importing bibliographic information from the catalogue into the Zotero library works quite well. The Zotero-Connector is compatible with some catalogues and literature databases.
Mendeley
Mendeley is also free of charge. In contrast to Zotero, the import of bibliographic entries from library catalogues works less well here. The strengths of this program lie in the import and management of PDFs. With Drag & Drop or Watch Folder the PDF is imported and at the same time the bibliographic information of the PDF is entered into Mendeley. With the integrated PDF-Viewer the PDF can be read, marked and annotated within Mendeley.
EndNote
In contrast to Zotero and Mendeley, EndNote is not free of charge. This program is not quite intuitive and offers a lot of functionalities. An important feature is “Find Full Text”, which can be found under Edit -> Preferences for Windows or EndNote X9 -> Preferences for Mac. Within the program you can use the bibliographic information (e.g. DOI) to search for the corresponding PDF and append it to the entry. In order to get the best possible search result, the following URL should be added to the “Find Full Text” setting for the SFX entry: https://sfx.metabib.ch/sfx_uzh. Important information: This function works quite well, but unfortunately it is not perfect.
Another function is the simple editing of existing citation styles.
Citavi
Citavi is not only a program for litertature management but also for konwledge organization. This means that all citation can be managed. Additionally the program has a task organization, which works as a to-do list. Citavi is offered at the UZH as a Campus licence. Citavi is only compatible for Windows.
Further information about the 4 programs are available on this site of the Main Library.
The software comparison of the University Library of the TU Munich offers a comprehensive overview of the 4 literature management programs presented here and of other literature management programs.
Would you like to learn more about these programs? The Main Library and Zentrale Informatik Zentrale Informatik offer courses for the four programs.