I looked at the following 2 Zotero tutorials to get a better sense of how an api works. The initial tutorial allows users to connect to bibliographic information stored in zotero by using the zotero api. This allowed the user to retrieve and create or add content to a new or existing library of bibliographic information. In the initial exercise, we were able to connect to a specific database and retrieve information such as the item type and various other bits of bibliographic information to have a clear sense of what was being done with the use of the python scripting.

Through the use of the tutorials, it was difficult to get a sense of how this could be used, since the examples focused mainly on rather small amounts of bibliographic information. But, if users are looking at massive amounts of bibliographic information from other users or collections (unfortunately, LAC doesn’t appear to have a similar API), this technique could be extremely useful. As a researcher, being able to access and extract currently existing bibliographic information can not not only save time, but it can also allow the researcher to better find relevant resources for his/her research.

From an information professional perspective, having access to bibliographic information would allow information professionals to better understand the various ways researchers are collecting information as well as the types of materials (using frequencies, etc.) that are being collected, over multiple disciplines. With the use of the python modules for zotero, this could be achieve more quickly and more effectively.