I have been using the Zotero plug-in to Firefox, developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, as my primary computer tool in my dissertation work at The Ohio State University. My research is about quality and its meanings in distance education at colleges and universities. The study uses qualitative methods and revolves around a case study at one institution.

Originally, I approached Zotero as a tool for managing citations. But as I became familiar with it, I learned how to use it for data analysis using interviews, documents, and other source materials. I found it to be comparable to other tools for qualitative research such as N Vivo.